Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science WITH RENÉE BERGLAND

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was a young naturalist aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical—and too dangerous for women. In her book Natural Magic, Bergland intertwines the stories of these two luminary nineteenth-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature. Just as Darwin’s work was informed by his roots in natural philosophy and his belief in the interconnectedness of all life, Dickinson’s poetry was shaped by her education in botany, astronomy, and chemistry, and by her fascination with the enchanting possibilities of Darwinian science. Casting their two very different careers in an entirely fresh light, Renée Bergland brings to life a time when ideas about science were rapidly evolving, reshaped by poets, scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike. She paints a colorful portrait of a remarkable century that transformed how we see the natural world. Today, more than ever, we need to reclaim their shared sense of ecological wonder.

Renée Bergland is the Program Director of Literature and Writing at Simmons College and is a literary critic and a historian of science who is passionately interested in the nuts and bolts of writing craft. Her earlier books are Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics and The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. With Gary Williams, she edited Philosophies of Sex: Critical Essays on The Hermaphrodite. She has published articles, essays, and reviews for general readers in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Nautilus, and The Boston Globe.