Description: Today's environmental decimation and climate crises have arisen from our drive for individual material prosperity. We even appreciate nature primarily for its fulfilment of our interests, whether economic productivity, aesthetic pleasure, or personal well-being. And yet, we still ask how we have reached this dire ecological condition and what it is that has kept us from acting effectively to maintain a thriving and diverse biosphere. This collection of essays by major scholars from around the world analyzes how the industrial, imperialist Victorian era gave rise to today's unwillingness to move beyond our acquisitive drive. But it also explores the Victorians' initiation of the modern environmentalist movement, formulation of the first legislation defending rights of nonhuman animals, and invention of literary forms for contesting environmental degradation. In this most unlikely of eras, the volume uncovers both valuable insights into the limitations of our own environmentalism and innovative suggestions for overcoming them.
Brief description: Dennis Denisoff is McFarlin Chair of English at the University of Tulsa and recipient of the President's Award from both the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association and the North American Victorian Studies Association. He is a past Sarwan Sahota Distinguished Scholar at Toronto Metropolitan University, a recent Visiting Distinguished Researcher at Queen Mary University of London, and the 2025 Ruth and Lillian Marino Chair of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860-1910 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).