Overview

Literary Illusions explores the dialogue between Victorian literature and one of the nineteenth century's most popular modes of performance: conjuring. It explores the ways in which Victorian literature frequently deployed the figure of the magician to explore performance magic as a metaphor for writing itself, and the ways in which conjurors themselves were authors (of highly fictionalised biographies), while authors explored the narrative opportunities offered by magic (most notably Charles Dickens). The book theorises magic as a manifestation of Victorian concerns with authorship and the intellectual property debate, with the magician often deployed as a privileged and occasionally parodied figure in debates on textuality. Literary Illusions offers a reconceptualisation of the relationship between popular culture and literature in the nineteenth century, bringing canonical figures such as Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell into dialogue with lesser known Victorian bestsellers such as Henry Cockton and Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, and innovatively blends performance history with literary criticism.

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9781474460330

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Reviews

This a warm, wonderful book, and a book of wonders. Christopher Pittard brilliantly demonstrates the ways in which stage conjuring - with its acts of misdirection, sleight of hand, unreliability - offers many analogues and parallels with the Victorian novel, and at its heart, the book contains a long and revolutionary account of Charles Dickens as the greatest literary stage magician. Like his subjects, Pittard is a dazzling critical prestidigitator - this is the kind that can move seamlessly from Roland Bathes to Tommy Cooper in the same sentence.--Darryl Jones, Trinity College Dublin

This a warm, wonderful book, and a book of wonders. Christopher Pittard brilliantly demonstrates the ways in which stage conjuring - with its acts of misdirection, sleight of hand, unreliability - offers many analogues and parallels with the Victorian novel, and at its heart, the book contains a long and revolutionary account of Charles Dickens as the greatest literary stage magician. Like his subjects, Pittard is a dazzling critical prestidigitator - this is the kind that can move seamlessly from Roland Barthes to Tommy Cooper in the same sentence.--Darryl Jones, Trinity College Dublin

This is a warm, wonderful book, and a book of wonders. Christopher Pittard brilliantly demonstrates the ways in which stage conjuring – with its acts of misdirection, sleight of hand, unreliability – offers many analogues and parallels with the Victorian novel, and at its heart, the book contains a long and revolutionary account of Charles Dickens as the greatest literary stage magician. Like his subjects, Pittard is a dazzling critical prestidigitator – this is the kind that can move seamlessly from Roland Barthes to Tommy Cooper in the same sentence. -- Darryl Jones, Trinity College Dublin

Author Information

Christopher Pittard is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, specialising in Victorian literature. His books include a new critical edition of The Return of Sherlock Holmes (2023), The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes (2019), and Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction (2011). He has published numerous articles on Victorian culture in journals including Studies in the Novel, 19; Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Victorian Periodicals Review, Clues: A Journal of Detection, and Women: A Cultural Review.

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