Publisher Description

In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism’s rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed. Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences. Addressing the overlap between spiritualism’s explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.

Collection of thirty-five English ghost stories written during the Victorian Era.

An interesting rereading of familiar texts by Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot recovering the historical and literary roots of the supernatural as it appears in each women's work. Dickerson (English, Rhodes College) makes interesting observations about women's changing roles in the 19th century when scientific advancements relegated women to the home as arbiters of the spiritual while men occupied themselves with "rational" invention. Through close readings, she demonstrates how the Brontes, Gaskell, and Eliot resisted this division and, simultaneously, created a spiritual genre of writing traditionally denigrated by critics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book argues that theology is central to an understanding of the literary ghost story. Victorian ghost stories have traditionally been read in the context of agnosticism – as stories which reveal a society struggling with Christian orthodoxy in a new ‘Enlightened’ world. This book, however, uses theological ideas from St Augustine through to modern theologians to identify a theological journey taken by the protagonists of such stories, and charts each stage of this journey through the short stories it examines. It also proposes a theory of reader participation which creates an imaginary space in which modern epistemology is suspended. The book studies the work of four major authors of the supernatural tale: Arthur Machen, M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and Henry James.

This is a book to be read by a blazing fire on a winter's night, with the curtains drawn close and the doors securely locked. The unquiet souls of the dead, both as fictional creations and as 'real' apparitions, roam the pages of this haunting selection of ghost stories by Rex Collings. Some of these stories are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from this vintage era of tales of the supernatural. There are stories from distant lands - 'Fisher's Ghost' by John Lang is set in Australia and 'A Ghostly Manifestation' by 'A Clergyman' is set in Calcutta. In this selection, Sir Walter Scott (a Victorian in spirit if not in fact), keeps company with Edgar Allen Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu and other illustrious masters of the genre.

Full texts of "The Uninhabited House" by Riddell; "The Amber Witch" by Meinhold; "Monsieur Maurice" by Edwards; "A Phantom Lover" by Lee; and "The Ghost of Muir House" by Beale. 6 illustrations.