Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century

Elsa Richardson is Lecturer of History at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, where she is affiliated with the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare and the Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies. She researches and publishes on the historical interactions between medicine and the imagination, science and the supernatural, psychology and the occult.

• Introduction.- Chapter One: Second Sight and the Creation of the Highlands.- Chapter Two: Mesmerism, Phrenology and Supernatural History.- Chapter Three: Primitive Spiritualism and Origin Stories.- Chapter Four: Psychical Research, Folklore and Romance.- Chapter Five: Research in the Field: Ada Goodrich Freer and Fiona Macleod.- Conclusion.- Bibliography.- Index.

“Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century: Prophecy, Imagination and Nationhood is its interdisciplinarity. Richardson convincingly draws readers through the entanglements of positivist scientific discourse, literary aesthetic production, and nationalist rhetoric to argue that each participated in a larger project: the colonization of the Scottish imagination.” (Jayda Coons, The Wilkie Collins Journal, wilkiecollinssociety.org, April 25, 2019)