Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century England

Description

A study of the production, circulation and consumption of English ghost stories during the Age of Reason. This work examines a variety of mediums: ballads and chapbooks, newspapers, sermons, medical treatises and scientific journals, novels and plays. It relates the telling of ghost stories to changes associated with the Enlightenment.

'Sasha Handley's excellent study of the meaning, recording and use of ghost stories in the 'long eighteenth century' is a refreshing and much needed study.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 'a very useful study of, and compendium of references to, ghosts beliefs and stories in early modern England.' Fabula 'this is another significant historical study of ghost belief, ... Handley's work helps rescue ghost stories from the footnotes of History, and relocates them as a key element of the beliefs and culture surrounding death and the fate of the soul.' Journal of the Society for Psychical Research