ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“Organic Remains Restored”: Leonard Horner, August Goldfuss, and International Geological Research in Penny Magazine, 1833

• In Event: Stratigraphy, Deep Time, and the Making of Geological Knowledge 2

English Abstract

Historians have commented briefly on the reproduction of a portrait of ancient marine life based on “Jura Formation” (Goldfuss 1831) in an 1833 edition of Charles Knight’s "Penny Magazine." Scholars situate this image, retitled “Organic Remains Restored,” within early nineteenth century imaginings of prehistoric precursors of ocean fossil remains visible in Britain and continental Europe (Secord 1986, Rudwick 1992). Yet the annotated and cross-referenced woodcut was more than a reprinted image from "Fossils of Germany," it was integral to a serialized narrative on indigenous British fossil resources. Author Leonard Horner, a founding member of the Geological Society of London, explained to post-Reform Act readers the relevance of August Goldfuss and others’ ongoing global research and introduced economically, politically, and scientifically significant fossils as reliable indicators of British dominance and social stability. Drawing on the methodology of book history, Gowan Dawson and others evaluated interactions between and among publishers, authors, and readers as a lens through which to explore how science circulated in print during the 1800s. Keeping with the conference theme of “Shifting Perspectives,” my talk investigates the printed form itself, what Lisa Gitelman referred to as the “materiality of media” (Gitelman 2008). A focus on the media history of early nineteenth-century serialized geological articles in Penny Magazine permits an exploration of the ways in which innovative formats shaped, and continue to shape today, the reception of science in print.

Author

• Anne Ricculli, Morris Museum