num_pages: 280
description: The idea of eugenics - human selective breeding - originated in Victorian Britain in response to the urban poor. Darwin's evolutionary theory had laid the foundations for eugenics replacing paradise with primordial slime. Man had not fallen from Grace but risen from the swamps. And as architect of his own destiny he might rise still further. Eugenics was developed by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in the 1860s. Embracing the idea of evolution eugenists argued that through the judicious control of human reproduction and the numerical increase of the middle class Britain's supremacy in the world could be maintained. Born and bred among the competitive Victorian middle class eugenics was a biologistic discourse on class. Aiming at 'racial improvement' by altering the balance of class in society it was Galton argued 'practical Darwinism'. Eugenics found its most sustained expression in fiction and the periodical press and was central to late nineteenth-century ideas on social p
language: English
title: Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman
publisher: Oxford University Press