In 1815, French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck began publishing his monumental work Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (Natural History of Invertebrates) in Paris. The multi-volume work systematically classified invertebrate animals and presented Lamarck's evolutionary theory, which proposed that organisms could change over time through the use and disuse of organs and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Though Lamarck's mechanism of evolution was later superseded by Darwin's theory of natural selection, his work was pioneering in its advocacy for the transmutation of species and its comprehensive treatment of invertebrate life.

Lamarck's ideas on evolution and the transmutation of species influenced a generation of writers and thinkers who were grappling with questions of change, progress, and humanity's place in nature. The concept of evolution would later inspire poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson, who explored themes of deep time and species change in In Memoriam. Lamarck's work also contributed to the broader intellectual milieu that shaped the Romantic and Victorian literary imagination, as writers sought to understand the dynamic and ever-changing natural world.