Necromanticism: Traveling to Meet the Dead, 1750 - 1860

by Paul Westover

Necromanticism is a study of literary readers' compulsion to visit literary homes, landscapes, and (especially) graves during the long Romantic period. The book draws on the histories of tourism and literary genres to highlight Romanticism's recourse to the dead in its reading, writing, and canon-making practices.

225 pages, Hardcover

First published February 21, 2012

Reviews

[saizine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I’ll admit, I initially picked this one up because I was trawling the library shelves for another book and the brilliant title caught my eye. Luckily I still had a little space in my lending allowance so on the pile of books in my arms it went—and I’m glad it did, despite the fact that this is not within my field of academic interest at all! I mean, the edges overlap, but I am very much not a literary historian - and I still enjoyed the more casual manner in the writer’s approach, and the chapters ‘William Godwin, Necro-Tourism, and the Empirical Afterlife of the Dead’, ‘Interlude: Necromanticism and Romantic Authorship’ and the first half of ‘The Transatlantic Invention of “English” Literary Heritage’. Not in my list of absolute favourite scholarly works, but a strong contender, and certainly worth a look for anyone who does work on the subject.