Nineteenth-Century Gothic Spiritualisms: Looking Under the Table

Dear Colleagues,

In 1892, the satirical magazine Moonshine published “The Commission on Ghosts,” a mock-article recounting the “first sitting” of the Society for General Psychology’s Royal Commission on spirits. Those present are “The Chairman, the Editor of Light, Mrs. Annie Besant, Miss Florence Marryat, Mr. W. Eglinton, Mr. Dawson Rogers, Mr. C. N. Williamson, and Mr. W. T. Stead” (315). Each member was a public supporter/purveyor of spiritualist belief at the fin de siècle. All manner of ghosts are summoned during the séance, such as a two-thousand-year-old man who was “regarded as a joke” and “would like to retire from business, but knew of no alms-house established to shelter decrepit spectres” because he “had not frightened anyone since the Education Bill had passed” (315). After summoning a ghost who claims to be both Moses and Napoleon Bonaparte, a “diminutive Hobgoblin” who “had done pretty well until pantomimes became fashionable” appears (315). Florence Marryat asks if the Hobgoblin has read her popular spiritualist memoir There is No Death (1891), to which the “the Hobgoblin said: ‘That he had been spared that, but that an old gentleman ghost, who had grown tired of haunting houses where nobody ever came, had read it, and, so far as he knew, had caused his retirement from the profession, as he tried to do some of the impossible feats described in that work, failed, and was boycotted in consequence’” (315).

Though “The Commission on Ghosts” presents a scenario meant to mock preeminent spiritualists and occult believers, it simultaneously illuminates the lasting importance of these beliefs in Victorian society, almost fifty years after spiritualism’s beginnings in America.

This special issue invites papers on late-Victorian/ Edwardian Gothic spiritualisms. Beginning with the famous Fox sisters in New York state in 1848 and rapidly expanding to an international and global phenomenon, spiritualism, mediumship, table turning and table rapping became not just a fad, but a new religion. During the Victorian period, there was an astonishing rise in popularity of such alternate belief systems and practices, usually focused on some form of communication or connection with the dead in the afterlife. Spiritualism’s hold on the nineteenth century can be partially traced to a move away from religious discourses that—given the revolutionary and galvanizing theories of human origin developed by Charles Darwin and others—failed to provide satisfactory answers to cosmic questions. The rise is astonishing, perhaps, because many think of the Victorian period as a time of science, social reform, and the institutionalization of medicine. Still, by the turn of the century, for a variety of complex reasons, many late-Victorians and Edwardians turned to spiritualism to find answers, consolation, and comfort, not entirely available within the aforementioned fields.

We are interested in papers that will showcase the range in spiritualist works and ideas in circulation at the fin de siècle. We are interested in those Victorian spiritualisms that persisted into the Edwardian period, and those which were born at the turn of the century. This includes papers on the different forms of spiritualist practices—including séances, psychics, mediums and trance speakers; we also invite papers that discuss technologies or instruments of spiritualism—like tarot readings, spirit photography, “talking boards” (early Ouija boards), the planchette (automatic writing), and vacuum tubes (for self-recording), and full-body spirit manifestation particularly popular in the later decades of the century.

We encourage a number of research avenues for this project, including archival work using diaries, letters, periodicals, and magazines, as well as more traditional explorations of published spiritualist writings, including those of Florence Marryat (There is no Death (1891) and The Spirit World (1894)) or Annie Besant’s Autobiography (1893), among others. The ways in which fin-de-siècle novelistic representations of spiritualist practices might be in dialogue with common beliefs about the occult would also be of interest to the special issue; for example, the sensation fiction of Marryat, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others.

Possible themes or topics:

This is a project that is interested in taking seriously this cultural history of Gothic spiritualism. For many at the fin-de-siècle, these beliefs and practices meant something real and often represented a hugely significant part of their lives. We want to know more about that “something”—or why people gravitated to this movement as spectators, mediums, believers, con-artists, and businessmen/women. Essays might therefore consider one of the following approaches to spiritualism (or your own):

• As a means to gendered and financial authority for women.
• As a means to sexual expression or transgression.
• As a means to social mobility for working-class mediums.
• As an alternative source of therapy, especially relating to grief and loss.
• As an alternative (for those excluded from) medicine and/or science.
• As an alternative source of community and connection.
• As a means of social/sexual exchange where “propriety” breaks down.
• And its technology or science of ghosts.
• And its literary forms, or literary communities.
• And its history with skeptics.
• And its hoaxes.
• And its celebrities.
• And its literary influences and/or legacies.
• Modern or “Neo” representations of this history/literature in contemporary neo-Victorian fiction.

Dr. S. Brooke Cameron
Dr. Rachel M. Friars
Guest Editors

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• ghosts
• late-Victorian/Edwardian gothic spiritualisms
• tarot readings
• spirit photography
• “talking boards” (early Ouija boards)
• the planchette (automatic writing)
• vacuum tubes (for self-recording)