Strange Stories: Victorian FICTION-THE and similar items

6" x 9", 378 page hardcover with dustjacket titled STRANGE STORIES: EXPLORATIONS IN VICTORIAN FICTION - THE OCCULT AND THE NEUROTIC by Robert Lee Wolfe/ Gambit Incorporated , ISBN # 0-87645-047-8, First printing, copyright 1971/ The author of this book was the world's foremost collector of Victorian fiction and one of the most lucid interpreters of it. This work affords us a fascinating view of extraordinary books, characters, and ideas oddly relevant to our own strange time. "The major piece in this book is Sir Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer explored mesmerism, clairvoyance, hypnotism, spiritualism and magic, practiced and investigated them in his lifetime and wrote about them in his novels. Bulwer's own use of the supernatural depended in part upon his studies of older occult traditions - Rosicrucian, Paracelsian, and Neoplatonic, among others - all of which receive full treatment here. In dealing with some of these phenomena, especially mesmerism, to the neuroses of notable Victorians as revealed in their novels the author also shows that Freudian analytic concepts - whatever their validity for the late twentieth century - can often prove highly illuminating when applied to the lives and writings of Victorians,. Here are keys not available elsewhere to individual characters and the preoccupations of the era. The famous publicist and woman of letters, Harriet Martineau, and the secret agent, man about town and religious fanatic, Laurence Oliphant, provide the two chief cases in point. When examined together, the two prove to have surprising similarity, highly suggestive of the period as a whole."The book contains photographs, illustrations, notes, and an index. Robert Lee Wolff (26 December 1915, New York City ? 11 November 1980,Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a Harvard history professor, known for his 1956 book The Balkans in our time and his library collection of English novels of the Victorian period with over 18,000 items.Wolff wrote articles, prefaces, and books on history and English literature and was the co-author of three widely used textbooks in high school and undergraduate history courses. His library of English novels of the Victorian period was acquired in the 1980s by the University of Texas at Austin for $2.6 million. The book is complete and in GOOD - VERY GOOD condition with some overall wear mainly to the dustjacket which has some edgewear.