Author: Karl Bell

William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2015) 256 pp. Hb £70. ISBN 978-0-7190-7483-7 It is the sign of a good book when the reviewer’s main criticism is a quibble with the accuracy of its title. Despite the suggested focus on hypnotism, the main emphasis throughout is…

Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult (Ashgate: Farnham, 2012) 454 pp. Hb £95.00. ISBN: 9780754669128 The Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the occult still sits rather awkwardly within our understanding of an age that consciously defined itself through narratives of scientific, technological and intellectual modernisation.…