Haunting and spectrality in neo-Victorian fiction: possessing the past

Neo-Victorianism is now widely accepted as one of the most engaging forms of historical interplay in contemporary culture. This is the first book to offer a thorough examination of neo-Victorian fiction in the context of haunting and spectrality. Acknowledged as a fruitful area of research in recent critical theory, this trope provides both the organizing principle of the volume and a metaphor for contemporary re-imaginings of the Victorian past, which parallel a renewed interest in the impact of the occult and the supernatural on Victorian individuals. By looking at the encrypted spectral traces of the Victorian past in the work of writers such as Salley Vickers, Michel Faber, Valerie Martin, Michele Roberts, Sarah Waters, A. N. Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, John Harwood, Jem Poster, Charles Palliser, Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, Matthew Kneale and Clare Clark, this highly readable collection advances the increasing critical discussion of neo-Victorian literature.