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Victorian Nightshades: How the Solanaceae Shaped the Modern World
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Victorian Nightshades: How the Solanaceae Shaped the Modern World

by Elizabeth A Campbell
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780813952543 University of Virginia Press
Published
Mar 2025
Language
English
Size
9.25 × 0.5 × 6.12 in
$45.93
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A darkly alluring plant family and the arrival of modernity

Victorian Nightshades tells the story of how one plant family--notorious for centuries in England because of its frequently psychoactive and poisonous properties--rose to social and economic prevalence during the nineteenth century. Beginning with bittersweet and belladonna, the Old World species associated with evil, witchcraft, and dangerous women in an era when traditional botanical beliefs not only assigned morality to plants but also gendered them, Campbell then moves to the ubiquitous potato and tobacco before concluding with four of the Solanaceae that achieved the widest national favor by the end of the century: the ornamental petunia and the edible pepper, eggplant, and tomato.

The story of the nightshades exposes the conflicts between science and popular sentiment and between knowledge and received opinion that defined the nineteenth century. Campbell compellingly details how advances in medical and botanical knowledge, evolutionary theory, and the vagaries of human desire transformed the Solanaceae from a plant family plagued by fear and hostility in the British imagination to one of cultural favor and celebration by the turn of the century--encapsulating the Victorian era's course to modernity.

Specifications

PublisherUniversity of Virginia Press
PublishedMar 25, 2025
ISBN-100813952549
ISBN-139780813952543
Paperback366.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions9.25 × 0.5 × 6.12 in
Weight1 lb

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