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About this book
As seen in fiction, newspaper accounts, and magic shows, the presence of ghosts pervaded the Victorian period. This book examines supernatural encounters in a wide range of Victorian writers including Dickens and Kipling. Cadwallader argues that these fictional spirits reflect how Victorians were adapting to rapid scientific and religious changes.
Reviews
“Jen Cadwallader’s lively, accessible, and very insightful Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction brilliantly problematises readings of ghost stories as articulations of an agnostic sensibility … . Cadwallader performs sensitive and careful close readings of these stories, as well as providing a powerful sense of the complexity of the ghost story’s position in Victorian culture. I recommend Spirits and the Spiritual in Victorian Fiction very strongly.” (Jarlath Killeen, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Vol. 16, 2017)
"Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction explores a fascinating series of liminal territories: the spaces between the mind and the body, religious faith and scientific rationalism; puritan sensibilities and sexual awakenings. The ghosts that Jen Cadwallader tracks through the pages of Victorian ghost stories allow her to show us a culture which was contradictory and often uncomfortable in its own skin. It's lucid and witty as well as highly informative – intellectually pleasurable." - Ruth Robbins, Professor of English, Leeds Beckett University, UK
"Through deft readings of numerous examples of the genre, Jen Cadwallader's Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction offers a rich picture of the ghost story's place in Victorian culture. Charting how the authors of supernatural fiction responded to reductive physiological theories of mind by staking out personalized and experiential grounds for spiritual belief, Cadwallader provides a valuable corrective to existing narratives of the rise of secularism and the decline of religion in the period." - Tyson Stolte, Assistant Professor of English, New Mexico State University, USA
About the author
Jen Cadwallader is Associate Professor of English at Randolph-Macon College, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction
Authors: Jen Cadwallader
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-55992-0Published: 22 January 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-71937-2Published: 11 February 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 209
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Literary History, Spirituality, British and Irish Literature, European Literature