The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947

Christine Ferguson, Andrew Radford, Christine Ferguson, Andrew Radford

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351168304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Between 1875 and 1947, a period bookended, respectively, by the founding of the Theosophical Society and the death of notorious occultist celebrity Aleister Crowley, Britain experienced an unparalleled efflorescence of engagement with unusual occult schema and supernatural phenomena such as astral travel, ritual magic, and reincarnationism. Reflecting the signal array of responses by authors, artists, actors, impresarios and popular entertainers to questions of esoteric spirituality and belief, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the enormous interest in the occult during a time typically associated with the rise of secularization and scientific innovation. The contributors describe how the occult realm functions as a turbulent conceptual and affective space, shifting between poles of faith and doubt, the sacrosanct and the profane, the endemic and the exotic, the forensic and the fetishistic. Here, occultism emerges as a practice and epistemology that decisively shapes the literary enterprises of writers such as Dion Fortune and Arthur Machen, artists such as Pamela Colman Smith, and revivalists such as Rolf Gardiner

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Occulture beyond the metropole
• Occulting the public sphere
• Women’s Occulture
• Art, fiction and occult intermediation
• Bibliography
• Index