Darwin's theory thrust human life into time and nature and subjected it to naturalistic rather than spiritual or moral analysis. Insisting on gradual and regular-lawful-change, Darwinian thought nevertheless requires acknowledgment of chance and randomness for a full explanation of biological phenomena. George Levine shows how these conceptions affected nineteenth-century novelists--from Dickens and Trollope to Conrad--and draws illuminating contrasts with the pre-Darwinian novel and the perspective of natural theology.

Levine demonstrates how even writers ostensibly uninterested in...