ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some introductory texts available during Mary Shelley's childhood, and examines Ludvig Holberg's A Journey to the World Underground, a fantasy voyage purportedly narrated by Niels Klim. Shelley probably encountered elementary books as a child, especially didactic dialogues – similar to Edgeworth's – produced mainly by women. This genre exemplifies how scientific texts and imaginative works of literature were not sharply distinguished, but marked opposite ends of a continuous spectrum. Women have been largely excluded from conventional histories of science, which focus on intellectual theories and inventions. Ethical problems about science were aired not only in political debates and learned journals, but also in fiction; reciprocally, educational authors devised fictional settings to engage their pupils' interest in scientific knowledge, and scientific arguments were often conducted through rhetorical strategies. An American nineteenth-century sequence parallels the links between Halley, Holberg and Shelley.
