Ghosts: A Social History, vol 5

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 5
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040243142

Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

The Haunted

The Haunted
Author: O. Davies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780230237100

'The Haunted' is the first truly comprehensive social history of ghosts. Using fascinating and entertaining examples, Davies places the history of ghosts within their wider social and cultural context, and examines why a belief in ghosts continues to be vibrant, socially relevant and historically illuminating.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 1

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 1
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040233570

Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 2

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 2
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040243134

Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

The Ghost

The Ghost
Author: Susan Owens
Publisher: Tate
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781849766463

Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of British life. Their enduring popularity in literature, art, folklore and film attests to their continuing power to fascinate, terrify and inspire. Our conceptions of ghosts - the fears that they provoke, the forms they take - personifies our shared past, reminding us of the layers of history beneath our feet and of old stories and timeless terrors that refuse to be erased. In this broad cultural history, Susan Owens reveals what these spirits and apparitions can tell us about our culture and about ourselves, and explores how ghosts have inhabited a wide range of roles from medieval times to the present day. A dazzling range of artists are featured, including William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Paul Nash and Jeremy Deller, alongside writers such as John Donne, William Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Hilary Mantel and Sarah Waters.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 4

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 4
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040249310

Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 3

Ghosts: A Social History, vol 3
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040248756

Reveals changing perceptions of ghosts at different social levels from the Reformation through to the twentieth century in Britain and America. This five-volume set focuses on the key published debates that emerged in each century, and illustrates the range of literary formats that reported or discussed ghosts.

Ghosts

Ghosts
Author: Roger Clarke
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1466857862

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining the behavior of the subject in its preferred environment: the stories we tell each other. "Roger Clarke tells this [the story that inspired Henry James' The Turn of the Screw] and many other gloriously weird stories with real verve, and also a kind of narrative authority that tends to constrain the skeptical voice within... [An] erudite and richly entertaining book." —New York Times Book Review No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly do those who have been haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the true events that inspired Henry James's classic The Turn of the Screw right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans, and true believers. The cast list includes royalty and prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. The chapters cover everything from religious beliefs to modern developments in neuroscience, the medicine of ghosts, and the technology of ghosthunting. There are haunted WWI submarines, houses so blighted by phantoms they are demolished, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and the emergence of the Victorian flash mob, where hundreds would stand outside rumored sites all night waiting to catch sight of a dead face at a window. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.

A Supernatural War

A Supernatural War
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192513397

A Supernatural War reveals the surprising stories of extraordinary people in a world caught up with the promise of occult powers. It was a commonly expressed view during the First World War that the conflict had seen a major revival of 'superstitious' beliefs and practices. Churches expressed concerns about the wearing of talismans and amulets, the international press paid considerable interest to the pronouncements of astrologers and prophets, and the authorities in several countries periodically clamped down on fortune tellers and mediums due to concerns over their effect on public morale. Out on the battlefields, soldiers of all nations sought to protect themselves through magical and religious rituals, and, on the home front, people sought out psychics and occult practitioners for news of the fate of their distant loved ones or communication with their spirits. Even away from concerns about the war, suspected witches continued to be abused and people continued to resort to magic and magical practitioners for personal protection, love, and success. Uncovering and examining beliefs, practices, and contemporary opinions regarding the role of the supernatural in the war years, Owen Davies explores the broader issues regarding early twentieth-century society in the West, the psychology of the supernatural during wartime, and the extent to which the war cast a spotlight on the widespread continuation of popular belief in magic.