COMMENT:A fairly comprehensive history of British spiritualism and psychical research in Victorian times. Its focus is not on various extraordinary claims and the purported evidence for them (though plenty of this sort of thing is covered as well), but on understanding the beliefs in question in the context of intellectual history. How Victorian religious concerns are expressed in psychical research -- seen as a way to overcome scientific naturalism -- is particularly interesting. Psychical beliefs attracted many, from reformist Christians, to those previously associated with socialist and freethought positions. In the end, psychical research often veers off into pseudoscience, but is also instrumental in laying the foundations of scientific psychology.
