Literary Illusions

Performance Magic and Victorian Literature

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

Av Christopher Pittard, University of Portsmouth) Pittard, Christopher (Senior Lecturer in English Literature

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Literary Illusions explores the dialogue between Victorian literature and one of the nineteenth century's most popular modes of performance: conjuring. It explores the ways in which Victorian literature frequently deployed the figure of the magician to explore performance magic as a metaphor for writing itself, and the ways in which conjurors themselves were authors (of highly fictionalised biographies), while authors explored the narrative opportunities offered by magic (most notably Charles Dickens). The book theorises magic as a manifestation of Victorian concerns with authorship and the intellectual property debate, with the magician often deployed as a privileged and occasionally parodied figure in debates on textuality. Literary Illusions offers a reconceptualisation of the relationship between popular culture and literature in the nineteenth century, bringing canonical figures such as Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell into dialogue with lesser known Victorian bestsellers such as Henry Cockton and Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, and innovatively blends performance history with literary criticism.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-01-31
Mått156 x 234 x 22 mm
Vikt546 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieNineteenth-Century and Neo-Victorian Cultures
Antal sidor272
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781474460330

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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.