Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century

"Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century" is a groundbreaking study of re-makings and reproductions across art, literature, the press, manufacturing and science. In an era of mass print culture, steam-driven mass production, biological theories of species transmutation, popular culture (including museums), and transnational commercial markets for commodities as well as fine arts, replication emerged as a defining feature of culture. In its specific sense a replica is a copy with a difference — the same but not the same. Replication also shaped scientific concepts in biology and geology and scientific practices that repeated experiments as part of the scientific method. Fourteen case studies map a range of 19th-century replication practices, uses and associations across art, literature, science, media studies and material culture studies. While replication stirred imaginations as well as anxieties over the industrialization that produced a modern mass culture, "Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century" suggests, nonetheless, that this phenomenon is a forerunner of our contemporary digital culture.