Servants of the Supernatural
  • Published: 15 January 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099478867
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

Servants of the Supernatural

The Night Side of the Victorian Mind

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A compelling history of the golden era of the Victorian seance that tells the tale of the mediums and psychics, their followers, and the sleuths who set out to expose them

Born of the so-called Victorian 'pseudo science' of mesmerism, the séance enjoyed a late 19th century golden age that ministered to the Victorian obsession with science, religious doubt, and entertainment.

Mediums, psychics and somnambulists were investigated by amateur sleuths and by scientists like Faraday and Darwin; their performances imitated and exposed by magicians, denounced by clerics, satirised in the press. Yet the popularity of spiritualism and the séance endured - and does so to this day.
  • Published: 15 January 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099478867
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

Antonio Melechi

Antonio Melechi is a Visiting Fellow at the University of York in Sociology. His main areas of interest include the clinical and literary histories of dream 'science', mental illness, parapsychology and self-experimentation. His most recent books include Fugitive Minds: On Madness, Sleep and Other Twilight Afflictions and Servants of the Supernatural: The Night Side of the Victorian Mind.

Praise for Servants of the Supernatural

Servants of the Supernatural takes us on a joyously weird circuit of the Victorian obsession with the supernatural... Riotously enjoyable.

Judith Flanders

Fascinating... brings to life the wonderfully flamboyant cheats and frauds of the 19th century medium trade... His tale stands beautifully as a reminder to choose one's beliefs carefully

Deborah Blum, author of Ghost Hunters

Lustrous... the heyday of the Victorian séance in all its table-trembling, tambourine-tapping glory.

Word Magazine

[An] engrossing account of séances, mesmerism and mediums.

Scotland on Sunday

The story of the Victorian obsession with séances, spirit writing, communing with the dead and all the showmanship that went with it...Melechi tells it well and wittily.

Express

Fascinating and hilarious

Mail on Sunday