Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture Series editor Joseph Bristow Department of English University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA PROOF REVISED Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture is a new monograph series that aims to represent the most innovative research on literary works that were produced in the English-speaking world from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the fn de siécle. Attentive to the historical continuities between ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’, the series will feature studies that help scholarship to reassess the meaning of these terms during a century marked by diverse cultural, literary, and political movements. The main aim of the series is to look at the increasing infu- ence of types of historicism on our understanding of literary forms and genres. It refects the shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected not only the period 1800–1900 but also every feld within the discipline of English literature. All titles in the series seek to offer fresh critical perspectives and challenging readings of both canonical and non- canonical writings of this era. More information about this series at PROOF http://www.springer.com/series/14607 REVISED Ben Carver Alternate Histories and Nineteenth- Century Literature Untimely Meditations PROOFin Britain, France, and America REVISED Ben Carver Department of English Falmouth University Penryn, UK Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture ISBN 978-1-137-57333-9 ISBN 978-1-137-57334-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57334-6 PROOF Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937711 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information inREVISED this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Image credit: © Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom PROOF To speak truthfully, one must talk of the impossibility, not simply the diffcul- ties, of a satisfactory portrayal, if one refects on the tangled hypotheses that press upon the steps of the alternate historian. —Charles Renouvier, Uchronie (l’utopie dans l’histoire) (Bureau de la Critique Philosophique, 1876), p. 408. REVISED PROOF REVISED For my family PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Alternate history is a topic which encourages enthusiastic recommenda- tions of further reading, and I am profoundly thankful for the many sug- gestions received and conversations about PROOFimaginary worlds that have taken place in and outside scholarly settings. It is also a subject which appeals to several types of specialist reader—of utopian, science, and other felds of speculative fction. The many insights and suggestions I have received from these experts have been infuential on the fnished work. Many goose chases have been the result of these conversations, some wild but in many cases to works of prose and poetry that have become integral to the book. My thanks to all my interlocutors. This work began as a doctoral thesis, and I am indebted to my Ph.D. supervisors, Alex Murray and Regenia Gagnier, for their advice and sup- port; I am likewise grateful for the constructive feedback from the mem- bers of the assessment panel, Matthew Beaumont and Paul Young. These readers clarifedREVISED the project’s potential, and showed me what needed to be worked on in the passage from the thesis to a monograph that was ready to present to a wider audience. A large amount of theoretical elaboration has gone, and the chapters on lost worlds and American alternate history have been added. Chapter four is a development of ideas originally pub- lished in the Journal of Victorian Culture 18.4 (December 2013). The support for the project at Palgrave has been constant, and the editorial guidance and effciency have meant that the journey from pro- posal to completion has been as smooth as it could have been. Joseph Bristow’s scrupulous attention to the submitted manuscript revealed the ix x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS imprecision and inconsistencies than I was blind to. The fnal version, I hope, rewards the reader’s kind attention with suffcient clarity of expres- sion. The wonderful image of Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting of Sappho and Alcaeus is reproduced here with the permission of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The painting was in my thoughts long before I chose it for the cover illustration, and their generous cooperation has meant that the book has the best image I could wish for it. William West’s illustration of the divergence of species (the only illustration in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species) is reproduced with permis- sion of John van Wyhe ed. 2002–, of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk/). A number of images have been digitized by Edinburgh University, Main Library, and I am grateful for their assistance; these are the plates from the frst edition of James Nasmyth and James Carpenter’s work, The Moon Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite (John Murray, 1874), William Herschel’s engraving of the Nebula of Orion as it appearedPROOF in John Pringle Nichol’s Thoughts on Some Important Points Related to the System of the World (William Tait, 1846), and a fgure from Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise, a Narrative of Travel with Studies of Man and Nature (Macmillan & Co., 1869). The providers of the other images are Alamy image service (Napoleon Crossing the Alps), University of Michigan Library (digitized image of Renouvier’s untitled illustration of divergence), the Arthur Conan Doyle encyclopedia (www.arthur-conan-doyle.com) and Arthur Conan Doyle Trademarks (the illustrations which appeared in the Strand Magazine’s serial publication of The Lost World (1912)), and the anon- ymous provider of the open-source digital image of the frontispiece to Mark Twain’sREVISED A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889). I am grateful for all for their assistance and permissions to reproduce. Several of the French-language sources have not been translated into English, and where not otherwise noted, I have produced my own trans- lations to the best of my ability. My family have lived with this project as long as I have, so my wife, daughter, mother, and father are now fellow travellers in the realms of what-if. Their love and patience during long periods of solitary study have kept me going; they have also been here to welcome me back into the lands of things-as-they-are, and I would not choose to live anywhere PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi else. My father deserves special thanks for the enormous task of proof- reading the work before submission. His attention and suggestions for revision have made this a better book. The remaining errors are my own. Falmouth, UK Ben Carver PROOF REVISED CONTENTS 1 Introduction: The Castle of If 1 Notes PROOF 16 2 Napoleonic Imaginaries 21 Other Napoleons 21 Phantasms and Hoaxes 25 Historic Doubts: A Sceptical Alternative 33 Napoléon Apocryphe: “This immense reality” 38 “History’s Slave”: Tolstoy’s Condemnation 48 Notes 54 3 Inheriting Antiquity: Political Genealogy in Disraeli and Renouvier 61 “The Perfect Story of Mankind” 61 RomanticREVISED Politics and Style 66 Romance and History 73 Uchronie: Liberty and History in Renouvier 81 Inheritance and Evolution 90 Notes 100 xiii xiv CONTENTS 4 Nebulous History and the Plurality of Worlds 107 “Beyond the Visible” 107 Theological Limits: “What Is Man, that Thou Art Mindful of Him?” 113 History and Nebulae 117 Instruments of Perception 124 Hale’s and Flammarion’s Alternate-Historical Beings 129 Blanqui, Nietzsche, and the Materialism of History 134 Notes 145 5 Lost Worlds and the (Un)Natural History of Gender 151 “Replaying Life’s Tape”: The Alternate History of Nature 151 The Island Paradigm as Rule and Exception 154 Lost Worlds and the Recovery of Masculinity 161 Recovering the Female (Selector) 169 Eugenics and Education in Mizora 176 Women, Evolution, and Economics PROOF 183 Herland—For Him 191