Description
Book SynopsisThe nineteenth century saw not only the emergence of the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter but also a fascination with séances and occult practices like automatic writing as a means for contacting the dead. Like the new technologies, modern spiritualism promised to link people separated by space or circumstance; and like them as well, it depended on the presence of a human medium to convey these conversations. Whether electrical or otherworldly, these communications were remarkably often conductedin offices, at telegraph stations and telephone switchboards, and in séance parlorsby women.
In The Sympathetic Medium, Jill Galvan offers a richly nuanced and culturally grounded analysis of the rise of the female medium in Great Britain and the United States during the Victorian era and through the turn of the century. Examining a wide variety of fictional explorations of feminine channeling (in both the technological and supernatural realms) by such authors as Henry Jam
Trade Review
Galvan's thesis analyzes women’s work as transmitters of messages, not only in the spirit realm but increasingly in the late nineteenth century as teelgraphists, typists, and telephone operators.... This approach to notions of occult and technological channeling offers a thoroughly interesting and well-focused engagement with the subject.... Overall, this is a detailed and exceptionally well-informed study that provides some delightful analyses of literary texts.
-- Catherine Wynne * English Literature in Transition 1880–1920 *
