Literary Illusions

Christopher Pittard is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, specialising in Victorian literature. His books include a new critical edition of The Return of Sherlock Holmes (2023), The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes (2019), and Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction (2011). He has published numerous articles on Victorian culture in journals including Studies in the Novel, 19; Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Victorian Periodicals Review, Clues: A Journal of Detection, and Women: A Cultural Review.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsSeries PrefaceIntroduction: Taking Magic Seriously1. V for Ventriloquism: Vocal Magic in Henry Cockton’s Valentine Vox2. A Cabinet of Curiosities: Dickens, Magic and Secrecy3. The Travelling Doll Wonder: From Khia Khan Khruse to Bleak House4. Unprecedented Arts: Conjuring in Cranford5. Bullet Catches and Second Sight: Conjuror Biography and Robert-Houdin’s MemoirsConclusion: Edwardian and Neo-Victorian ConjuringAppendix: Khia Khan Khruse’s UK PerformancesBibliographyIndex

This is a warm, wonderful book, and a book of wonders. Christopher Pittard brilliantly demonstrates the ways in which stage conjuring – with its acts of misdirection, sleight of hand, unreliability – offers many analogues and parallels with the Victorian novel, and at its heart, the book contains a long and revolutionary account of Charles Dickens as the greatest literary stage magician. Like his subjects, Pittard is a dazzling critical prestidigitator – this is the kind that can move seamlessly from Roland Barthes to Tommy Cooper in the same sentence.