Memory in Victorian speculative fiction, 1870-1900

It seeks to provide a deeper understanding of these works by contextualising them in relation to nineteenth-century scientific writing. It draws on a wide range of sources, including books, periodicals, personal notebooks, and correspondence.

This project seeks to bring together the history of science, including mental science, cultural history and literary criticism. The thesis examines some key issues and concepts, such as the relationships between memory and dreaming, organic memory, ancestral memory, and traumatic memory. While there has been substantial scholarly work on fin-de-siecle utopias and dystopias, these works have predominantly been examined through a political analytical framework, with depictions of cognitive experience often overlooked.