Victorian Literary Mesmerism

Victorian Literary Mesmerism offers eleven interdisciplinary essays on the intersections between mesmerism and nineteenth-century literature. Its scope is complex and ambitious: ranging from considerations of the impact of literature on quasi-scientific writings of the early 1800s, to a study of Arthur Conan Doyle's use of ‘magnetic' ideas at the fin de siècle . The collection boldly leaps across generic, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries; essays on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell sit snugly besides studies of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Medicine, the law, spiritualism, physics, and literature are all discussed in light of their respective impact on Australian, British, and American history.