Michael Schmicker's Blog - Posts Tagged "naples"
Who Was the Real "Alessandra Queen of Spirits"?
My new novel, "Alessandra Queen of Spirits" was inspired by a real life person.
While researching my first book, "Best Evidence," I came across a fascinating woman – Italian Spiritualist medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), a fiery-tempered, erotic, middle-aged Neapolitan peasant woman who levitated tables and conjured up spirits of the dead in dimly-lit séance rooms all across Europe at the end of the 19th century. Her psychic powers baffled Nobel Prize-winning scientists, captivated aristocracy from Paris to Vienna and enraged the powerful Catholic Church which suspected her paranormal feats were the work of Satan. Her scandalous flirtations, her meteoric rise to fame, her humiliating fall and miraculous redemption made world headlines at the time (when she died, she earned an obituary in the New York Times).
My heroine, like Palladino, is a Spiritualist medium, which adds a hook to the novel, but the story itself is firmly grounded in the bitter, fin-de-siecle clash between Darwinism/Science and religion/Spiritualism. Most 19th century mediums were women, suffering from "female hysteria," according to the (male) psychiatrists of the Victorian era. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the social, political, sexual and psychological currents of the era.
If you want to see some of the books I read to help me craft the novel, check out the book list tagged "paranormal-Eusapia Palladino." From cholera epidemics and Spiritualism to Camorra gangsters and Victorian dinners in Cambridge England, you have to deliver accurate details. I even poured through antique Baedeker Guides from the 19th century to find out how much a plate of macaroni cost.
While researching my first book, "Best Evidence," I came across a fascinating woman – Italian Spiritualist medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), a fiery-tempered, erotic, middle-aged Neapolitan peasant woman who levitated tables and conjured up spirits of the dead in dimly-lit séance rooms all across Europe at the end of the 19th century. Her psychic powers baffled Nobel Prize-winning scientists, captivated aristocracy from Paris to Vienna and enraged the powerful Catholic Church which suspected her paranormal feats were the work of Satan. Her scandalous flirtations, her meteoric rise to fame, her humiliating fall and miraculous redemption made world headlines at the time (when she died, she earned an obituary in the New York Times).
My heroine, like Palladino, is a Spiritualist medium, which adds a hook to the novel, but the story itself is firmly grounded in the bitter, fin-de-siecle clash between Darwinism/Science and religion/Spiritualism. Most 19th century mediums were women, suffering from "female hysteria," according to the (male) psychiatrists of the Victorian era. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the social, political, sexual and psychological currents of the era.
If you want to see some of the books I read to help me craft the novel, check out the book list tagged "paranormal-Eusapia Palladino." From cholera epidemics and Spiritualism to Camorra gangsters and Victorian dinners in Cambridge England, you have to deliver accurate details. I even poured through antique Baedeker Guides from the 19th century to find out how much a plate of macaroni cost.
