Martin Willis and Catherine Wynne (eds.), Victorian Literary Mesmerism (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006) ISBN 9789042020085
Victorian Literary Mesmerism offers eleven interdisciplinary essays on the intersections between mesmerism and nineteenth-century literature. Its scope is complex and ambitious: ranging from considerations of the impact of literature on quasi-scientific writings of the early 1800s, to a study of Arthur Conan Doyle's use of ‘magnetic' ideas at the fin de siècle . The collection boldly leaps across generic, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries; essays on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell sit snugly besides studies of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Medicine, the law, spiritualism, physics, and literature are all discussed in light of their respective impact on Australian, British, and American history.
According to Willis's and Wynne's introduction, the function of this collection is to illustrate how to ‘investigate literary mesmerism is to unveil the reactions and responses, the interventions and influences of one of the key forms of knowledge that the Victorians used to define their sense of self and society'. Yet, this is a volume responsible for doing much more than revealing how the nineteenth century responded to mesmeric ideas. For example, essays by Ilana Kurshan, Anthony Enns, and Mary Elizabeth Leighton ask important questions about the relationship between scientific and literary thinking. Indeed, we are all familiar with interdisciplinary work which highlights how literature ‘drew on' scientific ideas, but Kurshan's essay kicks this collection off with a refreshing and much-needed analysis of how canonical fiction has impacted on the formation of ideas that one expects to be mainly science-based.
This book includes essays that shed new light on authors that we are all familiar with. Louise Henson's contribution, for instance, offers an excellent account of how Gaskell was influenced by writings on medicine, while Willis's and Wynne's respective essays on George Eliot and Conan Doyle offer new insights into the works of both novelists. Gavin Budge's piece on Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Alisha Siebers's consideration of Marie Corelli's career illustrate how this is a collection that intends to reintroduce its readers to writers that have become marginal figures in interdisciplinary study.
Collectively, these essays discuss a wide range of issues relating to crime, gender, class, and many other subjects besides. The eclecticism of the book highlights how the theme of mesmerism itself infiltrated a wide range of writings and ideas of the nineteenth century. This volume is well-arranged and all of the essays are well-written. Offering eleven accounts of key episodes in the long-running encounter between mesmerism and literature, Victorian Literary Mesmerism is a strong and fascinating anthology.
Andrew Mangham (University of Reading)
More details are available at the Rodopi website .