ABSTRACT
In guidebooks and early versions of textbooks, in essays and conversations, in fairy tales and parables, in poetry and fiction, nineteenth-century British women employed a diverse range of genres to enter scientific conversations, despite the voices of many professional men of science who often sought to exclude them. Writing about the dialogue form of women's popularizations, Greg Myers focuses on the hierarchical status implicit in this pedagogy. This chapter demonstrates ways in which women's marginalization from the increasingly professional realm of science was a productive constraint for their written work. It then describes women's efforts in botany, algology, zoology, palaeontology, astronomy, chemistry and physics. The chapter also focuses on scientific texts for children, illustrating the styles in which women first became didactic voices on scientific topics, as in the dialogue or conversational form, and the uses to which women put the familiar literary genres of parable, fantasy, and fairy tale.
