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Servants of the Supernatural

  • Imprint: Arrow

  • ISBN: 9780099478867

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 224g

  • RRP: £12.99

Servants of the Supernatural

  • The Night Side of the Victorian Mind

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.

  • Imprint: Arrow

  • ISBN: 9780099478867

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 224g

  • RRP: £12.99

Reviews

  • 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

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.

Antonio Melechi

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