Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution - cover image

Copyright

Adrian Desmond

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-239-6
Hardback978-1-80511-240-2
PDF978-1-80511-241-9
HTML978-1-80511-244-0
EPUB978-1-80511-242-6

Language

  • English

THEMA

  • NHD
  • RBX
  • QRYA5
  • NHB
  • JNB

BIC

  • HBLL
  • HRQA5
  • JPF
  • JPA

BISAC

  • HIS015060
  • SCI054000
  • REL004000
  • HIS037060
  • POL042040
  • EDU016000

Keywords

  • Evolution theories
  • W. D. Saull
  • Science Museums in London
  • Geology
  • 1830s radical thinking

    Reign of the Beast

    The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution

    • Adrian Desmond (author)
    FORTHCOMING
    In the 1830s, decades before Darwin published the Origin of Species, a museum of evolution flourished in London. Reign of the Beast pieces together the extraordinary story of this lost working-man's institution and its enigmatic owner, the wine merchant W. D. Saull. A financial backer of the anti-clerical Richard Carlile, the ‘Devil's Chaplain’ Robert Taylor, and socialist Robert Owen, Saull outraged polite society by putting humanity’s ape ancestry on display. He weaponized his museum fossils and empowered artisans with a knowledge of deep geological time that undermined the Creationist base of the Anglican state. His geology museum, called the biggest in Britain, housed over 20,000 fossils, including famous dinosaurs. Saull was indicted for blasphemy and reviled during his lifetime. After his death in 1855, his museum was demolished and he was expunged from the collective memory. Now multi-award-winning author Adrian Desmond undertakes a thorough reading of Home Office spy reports and subversive street prints to re-establish Saull's pivotal place at the intersection of the history of geology, atheism, socialism, and working-class radicalism.

    Endorsements

    In this absorbing study, Desmond has recuperated the life and times of a neglected, but important, socialist evolutionist.  Even though W. D. Saull worked behind the scenes most of the time, bankrolling radical causes, it is now clear what a central figure he is for understanding the history of atheism, socialism, and evolutionism, as well as the complicated process by which geology became incorporated into radicalism, before the Vestiges or the Origin of Species arrived on the scene.

    Bernard Lightman

    Professor of Humanities at York University, Canada

    Contributors

    Adrian Desmond

    (author)

    Adrian Desmond was educated at University College London and Harvard University, where he was Stephen Jay Gould's first history of science PhD student. He has two MSc's, one in history of science, another in vertebrate palaeontology, and a PhD for his work on radical Victorian evolutionists. For twenty years he was an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He is the multi-award-winning author of nine books, which include: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs, Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850-1875, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London, Darwin, Huxley: The Devil’s Disciple, Huxley: Evolution’s High Priest, Darwin’s Sacred Cause (with James Moore)