"Jolly fellows," a term that gained currency in the nineteenth century, referred to those men whose more colorful antics included brawling, heavy drinking, gambling, and playing pranks. Reforms, espec
Hannah More was a public figure at a time when domesticity was regarded as women's chief virtue. Her career as playwright, bluestocking, Evangelical educationalist, anti-slavery campaigner, political
Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He had expected criticism; in fact, letters were arriving daily, most e
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND BOOKLIST?Paris, 1815. Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, has arrived to study anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes—o
In 2002, a Cambridge historian is found dead, floating down the river Cam, a glass prism in her hand, after researching a book about a series of suspicious circumstances surrounding Newton's appointme
