"A Monkey into a Man": Thomas Henry Huxley, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and the Making of an Evolutionary Icon
The frontispiece to Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), showing a sequence of primate skeletons becoming successively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form, is one of the most iconic visual representations of evolution. This paper will explore the personal tensions and intellectual conflicts amidst which the famous frontispiece was created, revealing the festering antagonism between Huxley and the artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins which makes the image far stranger and more ambiguous than has previously been recognized.
Date: 27 February 2019, 17:30 (Wednesday, 7th week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 3
Speaker: Professor Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester)
Organising department: Faculty of English Language and Literature
Part of: Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Laura Spence