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Spiritualism in literature, Occultism--Great Britain--History--19th century, English prose literature--19th century--History and criticism, Occultism in literature, Religion and culture--Great Britain--History--19th century, and Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century

Spirit Matters explores the heterodox and unorthodox religions and spiritualities that arose in Victorian Britain as a result of the faltering of Christian faith in the face of modernity, the rise of the truth-telling authority of science, and the first full exposure of the West to non-Christian religions. J. Jeffrey Franklin investigates the diversity of ways that spiritual seekers struggled to maintain faith or to create new faiths by reconciling elements of the Judeo-Christian heritage with Spiritualism, Buddhism, occultism, and scientific naturalism. Spirit Matters covers a range of scenarios from the Victorian hearth and the state-Church altar to the frontiers of empire in Buddhist countries and Egyptian crypts. Franklin reveals how this diversity of elements provided the materials for the formation of new hybrid religions and the emergence in the 20th century of New Age spiritualities.Franklin investigates a broad spectrum of experiences through a series of representative case studies that together trace the development of unorthodox religious and spiritual discourses. The ideas and events discussed by Franklin through these case studies were considered outside the domain of orthodox religion yet still religious or spiritual rather than atheistic or materialistic. Among the works—obscure and canonical—he analyzes are Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni and A Strange Story; Forest Life in Ceylon, by William Knighton; Anthony Trollope's The Vicar of Bullhampton; Anna Leonowens's The English Governess at the Siamese Court; Literature and Dogma, by Matthew Arnold; and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Popular culture--Great Britain--History--19th century, Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--20th century, Spiritualism--United States--History--19th century, Seances--United States--History--19th century, Popular culture--United States--History--19th century, and Seances--Great Britain--History--19th century

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.

Literature and spiritualism--Great Britain--History--20th century, Literature and spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century, Spiritualism--United States--History--20th century, Literature and spiritualism--United States--History--19th century, Literature and spiritualism--United States--History--20th century, Spiritualism--United States--History--19th century, Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--20th century, and Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century

Examines the Spiritualist movement's role in disseminating eugenic and hard hereditarian thought.Studying transatlantic spiritualist literature from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, Christine Ferguson focuses on its incorporation and dissemination of bio-determinist and eugenic thought. She asks why ideas about rational reproduction, hereditary determinism and race improvement became so important to spiritualist novelists, journalists and biographers in this period. She also examines how these concerns drove emerging Spiritualist understandings of disability, intelligence, crime, conception, the afterlife and aesthetic production. The book draws on rare material, including articles and serialized fiction from Spiritualist periodicals such as Light, The Two Worlds and The Medium and Daybreak as well as on Spiritualist healing, parentage and sex manuals.Key Features: •The first major study of Transatlantic Spiritualism's sustained commitment to eugenics, bio-determinism and hard hereditarianism •Devotes a chapter to eugenic and raciological writing of Paschal Beverly Randolph, the nineteenth-century African-American Rosicrucian and sex magician whose work has only recently been rediscovered by scholars • Interdisciplinary and historicist methodology • The rich transatlantic reading demonstrates the continuity and influence between British and American Spiritualist writings on the body, reproduction and mental fitness

Faith and reason--History, Occultism--Great Britain--History--17th century, Occultism--Great Britain--History--18th century, Skepticism--Great Britain--History--17th century, Skepticism--Great Britain--History--18th century, Enlightenment--Great Britain, Science and magic--History, Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--17th century, and Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--18th century

A new history which overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science – and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Spiritualism--Great Britain--History

Despite supernatural scepticism, stories about spirits were regularly printed and shared throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This case-study in the transmission of a single story (of a young gunsmith near Bristol conjuring spirits, leading to his early death) reveals both how and why successive generations found meaning in such accounts.

Quacks and quackery--Great Britain--History--19th century, Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century, and Magical thinking--Great Britain--History--19th century

The Victorians had a thirst for knowledge. This drove them to explore the unchartered corners of the world, plumb the unfathomable depths of science, discover evolution and create some of the engineering and architectural marvels of the world. Yet this open-mindedness also at times made them utterly gullible. Because of their closeness to disease and the ever-present threat of their own mortality, it was inevitable that they would be open to the claims of quacks who promised all kinds of panaceas, and to mediums who offered a means of communicating with the dead. So too did it make them eager for diversion and entertainment by the conjurers and illusionists of the great music halls. Strangely, it was through the magic-making skill of the conjurers that the activities of many of the tricksters and fraudulent mediums finally came to be exposed. Medical Meddlers, Mediums & Magicians is a box of delights for all students of Victoriana.

Spiritualism--United States--History--19th century, Spiritualists--New York (State)--New York--Biography, Sisters--New York (State)--New York--Biography, and Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century

Kate, Leah and Margaret Fox were three young sisters living in upstate New York in the middle of the nineteenth century who discovered an apparent ability to communicate with spirits. When this became known, they quickly found themselves at the core of an emerging spiritualist movement, and their public seances in New York City were attended by many. the movement gained considerable popularity, although Margaret would later admit to producing rapping noises by cracking her toe joints and both she and Kate eventually died in poverty. Spiritualism nonetheless became something of a Victorian phenomenon, both in America and Britain, with figures such as James Fenimore Cooper and Arthur Conan Doyle amongst its adherents. Maurice Leonard's account of the lives of the Foxes is a fascinating and informative look at the birth and early days of spiritualism, a belief that remains popular to this day.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism, English fiction--Women authors--History and criticism, Spiritualism in literature, and Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century

Using a wide range of unexplored archival material, this book examines the'spectral'influence of Victorian spiritualism and Psychical Research on women's writing, analyzing the ways in which modern writers have both subverted and mimicked nineteenth century sources in their evocation of the séance.

Mesmerism--Great Britain--History--19th century, Theater--Great Britain--History--19th century, Women and spiritualism--United States--History--19th century, Theater--United States--History--19th century, Women and spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century, Women mediums--United States--History--19th century, Mesmerism--United States--History--19th century, and Women mediums--Great Britain--History--19th century

Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the'Borderland,'a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the'Borderland'a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.