Darwinian Dialogues
Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Andrew Watts

Transcript 32

Legenda

  Autumn 2025

ISBN: 978-1-839541-96-4 (hardback)  •  RRP £95, $120, €120

ISBN: 978-1-839541-97-1 (paperback, forthcoming)

ISBN: 978-1-839541-98-8 (JSTOR ebook)

EnglishFrenchFictionTranslation


Artistic adaptations can readily be compared to genes. In art as in biology, adaptations evolve from a source material, undergoing replication and mutation as they attempt to improve their fitness for survival. Yet biological adaptation is much more than a convenient metaphor for the study of its cultural counterpart. Mobilising evolutionary thought – from the Darwinian concept of natural selection to more recent theories of human emotion – enables us to reshape our understanding of the forces, tensions, and contradictions that underpin the production and reception of adapted works. Focusing on adaptations of novels by key nineteenth-century writers including Austen, Balzac, and Twain, Darwinian Dialogues is a bold reassessment of the way in which adaptation operates as a creative practice, and how it, too, has evolved over time.

Andrew Watts is Reader in French Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Bibliography entry:

Watts, Andrew, Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda, 2025)

First footnote reference: 35 Andrew Watts, Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda, 2025), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Watts, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Watts, Andrew. 2025. Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Watts 2025: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Watts 2025: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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