Edinburgh Critical Studies In Victorian Culture

Part of the Edinburgh Critical Studies In Victorian Culture series, Determined Spirits offers a profound examination of the Spiritualist movement's role in disseminating eugenic and hard hereditarian thought. By studying transatlantic spiritualist literature from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, this scholarly work uncovers how bio-determinist ideas shaped the era's cultural landscape.

This academic study investigates how concepts of rational reproduction and race improvement permeated the writings of Spiritualist novelists, journalists, and biographers. Through an interdisciplinary and historicist methodology, the text explores the complex connections between spiritual belief and emerging understandings of disability, intelligence, and the afterlife.