The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs

About the book

In a Soho lodging-house, Signor Ricardo earns a modest living teaching Italian while reserving one room for studies he conceals from his landlady. His friend Dr. Steinberg worries that the nightly experiments are destroying his health. Ricardo's explanation reaches back to a marriage governed by jealousy and to questions about his dead wife that he cannot leave unanswered. The arrival of Hannah Stubbs, a country girl employed as a servant, offers the men a possible means of pursuing contact with the unseen world. Marryat places supernatural investigation within a household whose unequal relationships already shape what people are allowed to know and do. The desire for certainty about the past becomes inseparable from the consequences of treating another person as the instrument of that desire.

• Jealousy and remorse
• Mediumship and power
• Women and autonomy

Why read it

The contrast between Hannah's domestic position and the men's ambitious investigations makes the occult premise a question of human power as well as belief.

English Hutchinson and Co. edition of 1896