Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists: Theories of Vision in Victorian Literature and Science

This is an original study of the narrative techniques that developed for two very popular forms of fiction in the nineteenth century – ghost stories and detective stories – and the surprising similarities between them in the context of contemporary theories of vision and sight. Srdjan Smajić argues that to understand how writers represented ghost-seers and detectives, the views of contemporary scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists with which these writers engage have to be taken into ...