The Living and the Dead:Folklore and Magic, Science and Technology

[This story was published on November 25 on the BAVS Neo-Victorian blog. Read the original story at victorianist.wordpress.com/2016/12/02/neo-victorian-review-the-living-and-the-dead-folklore-and-magic-science-and-technology.] Last week, I blogged about The Living and the Dead’s young spirit conduit Harriet Denning, poised between childhood and a repressed Victorian womanhood. Harriet’s age is associated in nineteenth-century psychology with a vulnerability to hysteria and psychosexual confusion, […]

Lodestar review: The time travelling first lady of folk revival music returns

[This story was published on November 28 on the Hastings Observer website. Read the original story at hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/lodestar-the-time-travelling-first-lady-of-folk-revival-music-returns-1-7701382.] The perfect antidote to the loud and omnipresent horror of the US election, Shirley Collins’ first albumin thirty years evokes images of a peaceful England located somewhere in the past, a mythical rural space shaped by legend and […]

The Living and the Dead: Victorian Psychology and Spirit Possession

[This story was published on November 25 on the BAVS Neo-Victorian blog. Read the original story at victorianist.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/neo-victorian-review-the-living-and-the-dead-victorian-psychology-and-spiritual-ossession.] Last week, my first Victorianist post on the BBC’s series The Living and the Dead looked at the character of Charlotte, the pioneering photographer and new wife of Nathan Appleby.  As an enterprising New Woman, Charlotte is initially […]

The Living and the Dead: Psychographs, Celestial Telegraphers and Kodak Girls

[This story was published on November 18 on the BAVS Neo-Victorian blog. Read the original story at victorianist.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/neo-victorian-review-the-living-and-the-dead-psychographs-celestial-telegraphers-and-kodak-girls.] Haunted landscapes characterise the worlds within the medium of folk horror, creating fictional spaces in which pagan tradition collides with Christian demonology. The narrative of the BBC’s recent series The Living and the Dead exists within this creative environment, […]

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

[Image: Nameless and Friendless, 1857, Emily Mary Osborn] Hello, friends, Romans, and lovers of the creative, historical, queer, and macabre! Thank you for taking the time to visit my attempted cabinet of curiosities. For anyone who may have stumbled across this blog and might be wondering who I am, my name is Emily, I’m a writer […]

Spooky Sussex: county folklore

  [Image: Kingley Vale, near Chichester]   ‘Knuckerholes’, a haunted ASDA store and a mysterious fiery dragon spotted in the forest: Celebrating the weird and wonderful folklore of Sussex to mark this Halloween season Dancing fairies, jumping devils and all-female cuckoo clans – Sussex is home to some truly weird and wonderful beliefs, customs and tales. The […]