Author Archives: Melanie Keene

About Melanie Keene

Dr Melanie Keene is a research fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Dr Keene works on science for children in nineteenth-century Britain, and is currently preparing a book manuscript entitled The Fairy-Tales of Science: Fact and Fancy in Victorian Britain. Dr Keene research analyses ‘familiar science’ from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, exploring the literary style of the familiar introduction, the family context for science, and how familiarity was deployed to explain, instruct, and entertain. Topics of ongoing interest include the histories of everyday artefacts and activities, genre and analogy, board games and fairy-tales, puns and toys, and collecting science songs.

Robert Hunt’s Rocks and Romances, England

Posted on 26 August 2011 by Melanie Keene

Born in Plymouth Dock in 1807, Robert Hunt’s local legacy has been both a mineralogical collection at the Camborne School of Mines (now part of Exeter University) and a selection of regional folklore, Popular Romances of the West of England. … Continue reading →

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Science in Fairyland: Second Star to the Right, and Straight on till Morning

Posted on 1 April 2011 by Melanie Keene

It is almost impossible to conjecture when science began in fairyland, but we can be sure it was once upon a time. Serious attempts to map the terrain were made from the nineteenth century, when the scientific discipline of fairyology … Continue reading →

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