University of Birmingham academic wins book prize

John Holmes, Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham, has been awarded the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) book prize for the best book in the field of literature and science published in 2018 for his book The Pre-Raphaelites and Science (Yale University Press). John Holmes' book was selected by a prize review committee consisting of BSLS executive committee members and scholars who presented the award at a gala dinner in April. This revelatory book traces how the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their close associates put scientific principles into practice across their painting, poetry, sculpture, and architecture. In their manifesto, The Germ , the Pre-Raphaelites committed themselves to creating a new kind of art modelled on science, in which precise observation could lead to discoveries about nature and humanity. In Oxford and London, Victorian scientists and Pre-Raphaelite artists worked together to design and decorate natural history museums as temples to God's creation. At the same time, journals like Nature and the Fortnightly Review combined natural science with Pre-Raphaelite art theory and poetry to find meaning and coherence within a worldview turned upside down by Darwin's theory of evolution. Offering reinterpretations of well-known works by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and William Morris, this major revaluation of the popular Victorian movement also considers less-familiar artists who were no less central to the Pre-Raphaelite project.