Open Secrets - The Popular Fiction of Britain''s Occult Revival, 1842-1936

Open Secrets sheds new light on the fascinating popular fiction produced by key writers within Britain's occult revival, including Edward Bulwer Lytton, Emma Hardinge Britten, Marie Corelli, Mabel Collins, Arthur Machen, Charles Fort, Aleister Crowley, and Dion Fortune. In their hands, genres aimed at mass readerships- the Bildungsroman, romance, tabloid tit-bit, and detective tale- became potent tools through which to imagine and test unorthodox ideas about the unseen world. Their remarkable literary experiments aligned the rhythms of popular genre fiction with those of spiritual seekership, insisting that occultism could and should be for the mass reading public.

List of contents

• 1. Introduction: In Bulwer's Bookshop


• 2: Magical Meisters: The Problem of Progress in the Occult Bildungsroman


• 3: Sex, Self, and Liberation in the Female Reincarnation Novel


• 4: Journoccultism: Numinous News and the Mantic Fragment


• 5: Occult Detection in the Aeon of Horus


• Conclusion: Forming Occult Fiction in the Secular Age


• Bibliography


• Index

About the author

Christine Ferguson is Chair in English Studies at the University of Stirling, where she teaches and researches in the fields of Victorian literature, Gothic Studies, and esotericism studies.

Product details

• Authors: Christine (Chair in English Studies Ferguson, Ferguson Christine
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 18.06.2025
• EAN: 9780197651599
• ISBN: 978-0-19-765159-9
• No. of pages: 248
• Series: Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance, BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Occultism, Popular beliefs & controversial knowledge, Literary studies: general, Popular beliefs and controversial knowledge, Literary theory, Fiction and Related items