Martha Turner's book makes an important contribution to the growing studies of science and literature by examining the relationship between British fiction and the tradition of mechanistic science derived from Isaac Newton. It traces the evolution of the concept of mechanism among science writers and novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and undertakes detailed analysis of novels by Austen, Scott, Dickens, Meredith, Conrad, Lawrence, and Doris Lessing. The book provides a bridge between the mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth century and present-day habits of thought.