Spiritualism and women's writing
Subtitle: from the fin de sie  cle to the neo-Victorian
By: Tatiana Kontou
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9780230240797; 9780230200050; 9781282665125
Subjects: Spiritualism; Frauenliteratur; Literature; European; History and criticism; History; Spiritualism in literature; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; LITERARY CRITICISM; English fiction; Spiritismus; Women authors
Description: This original and imaginative study examines the influence of Victorian spiritualism and Psychical Research on a variety of modern and contemporary female authors. It explores both the material and ghostly connections between women's writing - particularly the work of Mich le Roberts, A.S. Byatt, Victoria Glendinning and Sarah Waters - and the practice of mediumship in the nineteenth century. For the first time, it provides a sustained analysis of how and why the haunted world of Victorian spiritualism has been appropriated and reimagined in late twentieth-century fiction. In addition, it shows how many of the apparently unprecedented innovations of modernism are in fact already present in the rituals, performances and documents of the Victorian s ance. Supported by compelling archival research throughout, the book not only demonstrates how a unique selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts are bound together by phantasmal ties but also shows how spiritualism forces us to reconsider our wider understanding of history, narrative and the afterlife.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-236) and index.

Description based on print version record.
Table of contents: title: Theatres in the skull: the society for physical research and actress narratives; title: Well-tuned mediums: May Sinclair and Dorothy Richardson; title: Phantasms of Florence Cook in Miche  le Roberts' In the red kitchen; title: Natural and spiritual evolutions: A.S. Byatt's Angels and insects; title: The other world illuminated: writing science, text and spirit in Victoria Glendinning's Electricity; title: Queering the se  ance: Sarah Waters' Affinity.