The Invention of Telepathy, 1870-1901

'Fine cultural history.' -David McAllister, Times Literary Supplement'Roger Luckhurst's The Invention of Telepathy comes at the disturbing story of modern psychic experiments through rich, overlapping layers of social and intellectual history and makes comprehensible what otherwise seem eccentricities and even folly on the part of scientists and thinkers.' -Marina Warner, 'Books of the Year', Times Literary Supplement'Luckhurst's densely worked argument picks up and knots the trailing threads in a carpet where figures of imperialist fantasy, technological terror and scientific speculation can be glimpsed side by side... lucid and richly layered study.' -Marina Warner, London Review of BooksThe belief in telepathy is still widely held and yet it remains much disputed by scientists. Roger Luckhurst explores the origins of the term in the late nineteenth century. Telepathy mixed physical and mental sciences, new technologies and old superstitions, and it fascinated many famous people in the late Victorian era: Sigmund Freud, Thomas Huxley, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde. This is an exciting and accessible study, written for general readers as much as scholars and students.