An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family - Hardcover

Bashford, Alison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241434327 ISBN 13: 9780241434321

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2022

Synopsis

'A masterpiece of biography ... a vivid account of a family at the heart of some of the great cultural shifts of the modern era' John Gray, New Statesman

'The whole of British intellectual life seems accessible through some branch of this sprawling family tree' The Guardian

In his early twenties, poor, racked with depression, stranded in the Coral Sea on the seemingly endless survey mission of HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age.

The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves. In innumerable fields observing both nature and culture, they worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and - perhaps above all - as public lecturers, educators and explainers.

Their speciality was evolution in all its forms - at the grandest level of species, deep time, the Earth, and at the most personal and intimate. They shaped great organizations - the Natural History Museum, Imperial College, the London Zoo, UNESCO, the World Wildlife Fund - and they shaped fundamentally how we see ourselves, as individuals and as a species, one among many.

But perhaps their greatest subject was themselves. Alison Bashford's marvellously engaging and original new book interweaves the Huxleys' momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies. The result is the history of a family, but also a history of humanity grappling with its place in nature. This book shows how much we owe - for better or worse - to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of a small, strange group of men and women.

'This is history with the engaging intimacy of a novel. Bashford brilliantly marries intellectual history with the story of four generations in a literary tour de force' Professor Jim Secord, author of Visions of Science

About this title

About the Author

Alison Bashford is Laureate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. Bashford was previously Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge. She is Fellow of the British Academy, the Australian Academy of Humanities and Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. In 2020 she was awarded the Royal Society (NSW) History and Philosophy of Science Medal for transformative historical studies of the biomedical and environmental sciences. In 2021 she was awarded the Dan David Prize for scholarship in the history of medicine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241434327
• ISBN 13: 9780241434321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576