This book offers an extensive analysis of Woolf's engagement with science. It demonstrates that science is integral to the construction of identity in Woolf's novels of the 1930s and 1940s, and identifies a little-explored source for Woolf's scientific knowledge: BBC scientific radio broadcasts. By analyzing this unstudied primary material, it traces the application of scientific concepts to questions of identity and highlights a single concept that is shared across multiple disciplines in the modernist period: the idea that modern science undermined individualized conceptions of the self. It broadens our understanding of the relationship between modernism and radio, modernism and science, and demonstrates the importance of science to Woolf's later novels.

This book offers an extensive analysis of Woolf's engagement with science, tracing the application of scientific concepts to questions of identity.

About the Author
Catriona Livingstone's work has appeared in Women: A Cultural Review, Woolf Studies Annual, and the Journal of Literature and Science. She co-organised the 2017 British Society for Literature and Science Winter Symposium, and was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Journal of Literature and Science/BSLS Essay Prize in 2017.


Book Information
ISBN 9781316514078
Author Catriona Livingstone
Format Hardback
Page Count 274
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 510g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 20mm