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Realism has long been associated with the secular, but in early nineteenth-century England a realist genre existed that was highly theological: popular natural histories informed by natural theology. The Divine in the Commonplace explores the 'reverent empiricism' of English natural history and how it conceives observation and description as a kind of devotion or act of reverence. Focusing on the texts of popular natural historians, especially seashore naturalists, Amy M. King puts these in conversation with English provincial realist novelists including Austen, Gaskell, Eliot, and Trollope. She argues that the English provincial novel has a 'reverent form' as a result of its connection to the practices and representational strategies of natural history writing in this period, which was literary, empirical, and reverent. This book will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth-century literature, science historians, and those interested in interdisciplinary connections between pre-Darwinian natural history, religion, and literature.

English literature --- English fiction --- Nature in literature --- Natural history in literature --- Nature --- Literature and science --- History and criticism --- Religious aspects --- History --- English literature - 19th century - History and criticism --- English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism --- Nature - Religious aspects --- Literature and science - Great Britain - History - 19th century --- Nature in literature. --- Natural history in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Religious aspects.