List of illustrations; Abbreviations; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Bildung, Biology and the Narrative Structure of Development; 2. A Portrait of the Artist as a ‘Biologist in Words’: Language, Epiphany and Atavistic Bildung; 3. Mendelian Inheritance, ‘Eternal Differences’ and Entropy in Howards End; 4. ‘Tampering with the Expected Sequence’: Heterochrony and Sex Change in Orlando; 5. Anachrony, Neoteny and the ‘Education of an Amphibian’ in Eyeless in Gaza; 6. Beginning again: Darwin’s Caterpillar from George Eliot to Beckett; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.