The Victorian aquarium

<i>The Victorian aquarium</i> explores the vogue for home tanks that spread through Great Britain around the middle of the nineteenth century. This book offers an example of how the study of a particular object can be used to address a broad spectrum of issues. The Victorian aquarium became in fact a point of intersection between scientific technological and cultural trends; it engaged with issues of class gender nationality and inter-species relations; it drew together home décor and ideals of domesticity travel and tourism exciting discoveries in marine biology and tensions between competing views of science; it also marked an important moment in the development of a burgeoning environmental awareness. Through the analysis of a wide range of sources including aquarium manuals articles and fictional works <i>The Victorian aquarium </i>unearths the historical significance of nineteenth-century tanks reconstructing their far-ranging cultural resonance.