Contesting Earth's History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860-1935

By the mid-nineteenth century, geologists and palaeontologists had reconstructed an authoritative narrative of Earth's deep history, from the planet's molten origins to the rise of humanity. Many figures in transatlantic science across subsequent decades, however, had problems with this narrative: it was too secular, inhuman, and evolutionary, or controlled too exclusively by elite scientists. Spe...