PHANTASMAGORIA. OR THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MAGICAL DECEPTION

London: Tegg and Castleman, [1803]. First Edition. Hardcover. Pages toned with scattered soiling and foxing, pencil notes on endpapers; binding Fine. Modern calf-backed orange paper boards (4-1/8" x 7"); 72 pages. Frontispiece engraving by I. Taylor after a design by W. M. Craig. Scarce Gothic fiction employing Phantasmagoria, developed in the late eighteenth century from the earlier magic lantern: illusionistic exhibitions and public entertainments in which "specters" were produced through the use of a magic lantern. One should not underestimate the horror felt by those whose vision, not trained by photography or the cinema, revealed to them spiritual entities that one could seemingly touch. According to an article by Terry Castle [CRITICAL INQUIRY 15.1 (Autumn 1988): page 39], “A number of literary works of the period contain episodes in which magic lanterns are used to deceive credulous would-be ghost-seers. Friedrich Schiller's fragment DER GEISTERSEHER (1789), translated into English as THE GHOST-SEER; OR, THE APPARITIONIST (1795), is the best known of such works. See also the anonymous Gothic tale PHANTASMAGORIA: OR, THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAGICAL DECEPTION (London, 1803)." Scarce early horror fiction.