Hassan comes to the subject from an economic history perspective, and the central theme of the book is the development, and the changing orientations of water policy.
Stapledon’s suspicions of inductive science and reductionist economics, his concern with holism, ‘spiritual values’ and ‘the nature of things’ and his emphasis upon breadth of vision and the cultivation of the imagination was in stark contrast to many scientists of the day.
With particular reference to Gatty’s British Sea-Weeds and Eliot’s ‘Recollections of Ilfracombe’, this article takes an ecocritical approach to popular writings about seaweed, thus illustrating the broader perception of the natural world in mid-Victorian literature.
