Showing how new scientific discoveries were presented to Victorian children through 'fairy tales of science', Keene's study introduces 19th-century debates about education, scientific progress and the role of fantasy.

The period between the European Renaissance and Enlightenment brought monumental scientific discoveries about gravity, the structure of the solar system and the circulation of the blood, but these coexisted with an almost universal belief in horoscopes and magic. In this book a Tudor historian explores how the great thinkers of the age responded to the entanglement of superstition and science, and shows how their work contributed to debate about the relationship between belief and knowledge.