"These specially commissioned essays provide an original analysis of key articulations of the Grotesque: the literary culture of Ruskin, Browning and Dickens, where it is a sign of the eruptions, intensities, confusions and disturbed vitality of modern cultural experience; the scientific revolution associated with Darwin, where it generates speculation about biological forces, bodily energies and mutations in nature; the social and historical literature of Carlyle, where it hovers on the edge of visibility, at once a transgression of the nature of industrial society and its purest manifestation." "The invaluable introduction looks at proliferations of the Grotesque in Victorian culture. Dealing with literature, history, social theory, art, design, science, popular culture, art criticism and aesthetics, it seeks to demonstrate the connections and tensions between these orders of cultural life."--Jacket.