An engaging study of how Victorian-era representations of ancient Egypt blended science and mysticism.

With its material remnants paradoxically symbolizing both antiquity and modernity to Victorian audiences, ancient Egypt was at once evocative of ancient magical power and of cutting-edge science, a tension that might be productively conceived of as “alchemical.” Examining literature and other cultural forms including art, photography, and early film, Eleanor Dobson herein traces the myriad ways in which the Victorian fascination with ancient Egypt evoked the entwined forces of magic and science, providing more than a mere setting for Orientalist fantasies and nightmares. From imaging technologies and astronomy to investigations into the electromagnetic spectrum and the human mind itself, this book demonstrates how conceptions of modernity were inextricably bound up in the contemporary reception of the ancient world, illustrating how such ideas took root and flourished in the Victorian era and persist to this day.
 

Eleanor Dobson is associate professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham.
 

List of figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction
1 Ghostly Images: Magic, Illusion, and Techology
2 Worlds Lost and Found: Journeys through Time and Space
3 Weird Physics: Visible Light, Invisible Forces, and the Electromagnetic Spectrum
4 Occult Psychology: Dreams, Trance, and Telepathy
Conclusion: Afterlives

Bibliography