Servants of the Supernatural : The Night Side of the Victorian Mind

Born of the so-called Victorian "pseudo science" of mesmerism, the seance 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, satirized hilariously in the press. Yet the popularity of spiritualism and the seance enduredand does so to this day. A revelatory exploration of the darker side of Victorian science, this narrative-driven history is full of literary and scientific anecdote and evocative depiction of 19th-century England.

Antonio Melechi is the author of Fugitive Minds.