Stott, Rebecca (K.)

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STOTT, Rebecca (K.)

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Anglia Polytechnic University, East Road, Cambridge CB2 1PT, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, affiliated scholar in Department of history and philosophy of science; York and Leeds University, instructor in English; Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, reader in Victorian literature, 1993-2003, professor of English, 2003—, head of department, and codirector of Speak-Write Project. Radio 4, England, broadcaster; presenter of history of science programs.

WRITINGS:

The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale: The Kiss of Death, Macmillan (Basingstoke, Hampshire, England), 1992.

(Editor and author of introduction) Tennyson, Longman (New York, NY), 1996.

Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

Theatres of Glass: The Woman Who Brought the Sea to the City, Short Books, 2003.

"SPEAK-WRITE" SERIES; AND SERIES EDITOR

(Editor with Peter Chapman) Grammar and Writing, Longman (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor with Anna Snaith and Rick Rylance) Making Your Case: A Practical Guide to Essay Writing, Longman (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor with Tory Young and Cordelia Bryan) Speaking Your Mind: Oral Presentation and Seminar Skills, Longman (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor with Simon Avery) Writing with Style, Longman (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to books, including The New Woman in Fiction and Fact, edited by Chris Willis and Angelique Richarson, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1999; Transactions between Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roger Luckhurst and Josephine McDonagh, Manchester University Press, 2000; and The Politics of Pleasure, edited by Stephen Regan, Open University Press, 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including Feminist Review, Conradian, Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Gothic Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Educator Rebecca Stott is a professor of English whose focus is Victorian literature. In addition to teaching at Anglia Polytechnic University, where she heads the English department and helps direct the school's Speak-Write skills-building program, Stott is also the author of the books The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale: TheKiss of Death and Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough. In keeping with the focus of the latter book, Stott is the author and presenter of a program on the history of science broadcast on England's Radio 4.

Published in 1992, The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale traces the roles of various fatal females found in classic fiction, among them Bram Stoker's Dracula, H. Ryder Haggard's She, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Stott references the theories of many contemporary feminist critics while exposing the connection between these well-known works of fiction due to their treatment of lead female roles. As one example, Stott notes the similar scene found in both She and Dracula, as large groups of men surround and seemingly chase back a monstrous female character. Chris Baldick, reviewing The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale in the Times Literary Supplement, complimented Stott's work, writing that she scans "the novels not just for evidences of the misogynist 'framing' of women characters, but for the complications and ironies of these subtler narratives, in which the framing process itself is called into question. This is an impressively intelligent work of investigation, which makes good use of late Victorian imperial history and criminology."

In Darwin and the Barnacle Stott focuses on the life and work of biologist Charles Darwin during the years between 1846 and 1854. By now Darwin had already written a draft of the work that would later be published as On the Origin of Species. However, he believed that before he made his theories known, he needed to establish himself as a researcher. Due to an early interest in barnacles gained during his medical studies, Darwin decided this would make an excellent area of study, and he spent the next eight years immersed in the study of these tiny creatures. His work resulted in a four-volume, groundbreaking study of these crustaceans.

Noting Stott's reliance on varied source material, including Darwin's letters, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author "tells her story beautifully, but she takes a while to get going and occasionally dallies on tangential topics just when one wants to know what happened next." Frederick R. Schram, writing in Nature, criticized Stott for what he considered errors and omissions, and maintained that she "seems to have missed the point about the barnacle years. This was when Darwin really came to grips with variation in species." In contrast, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette contributor Fred Bortz found the biography "rich in story and deft writing," and maintained that the work would find appreciative readers among those interested in "history, science or biography." A reviewer for Kirkus Reviews enjoyed the personal story of an amazing man that is recounted in Darwin and the Barnacle, writing that "Stott adroitly covers the events of the day, books, fads, and the gossip on everyone's lips." In closing, the reviewer dubbed the book "Well written and richly detailed."