The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762-1800 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521664585)

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.

Author: E. J. Clery
ISBN-10: 0521664586
ISBN-13: 9780521664585
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/28/1999
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.19h x 6.83w x 1.44d