The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800

by E. J. Clery

• ISBN13: 9780521664585
• ISBN10: 0521664586
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A genre of supernatural fiction was among the more improbable products of the Age of Enlightenment. This book questions the historical reasons for its growing popularity in the late eighteenth century. Beginning with the notorious case of the Cock Lane ghost, a performing poltergeist who became a major attraction in London in 1762, and with Garrick's spellbinding and paradigmatic performance as the ghost-seeing Hamlet, it moves on to look at the Gothic novels of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, and others, in unexpected new lights, drawing out the connection between fictions of the supernatural and the growth of consumerism.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi
Acknowledgments	xii
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I TECHNIQUES OF GHOST-SEEING
The case of the Cock Lane ghost	13	(20)
Producing enthusiastic terror	33	(20)
PART II THE BUSINESS OF ROMANCE
The advantages of history	53	(15)
Back to the future	68	(12)
The value of the supernatural in a commercial society	80	(15)
PART III THE STRANGE LUXURY OF ARTIFICIAL TERROR
Women, luxury and the sublime	95	(11)
The supernatural explained	106	(9)
Like a heroine	115	(18)
PART IV MAGICO-POLITICAL TALES
The terrorist system	133	(23)
Conspiracy, subversion, supernaturalism	156	(16)
Afterword	172	(3)
Notes	175	(31)
Bibliography	206	(12)
Index	218