Overview

The first significant study of cocaine in the literary and cultural imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this open access book offers an important exploration of the drug's symbolic and metaphorical associations in the decades prior to its criminalization. Examining the paradoxical position of cocaine in this period by looking at its role as an icon of technology, modernity and idealised medical identity, alongside developing notions of habituation and dependence, this book reads texts such as the Sherlock Holmes stories, by Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as work by Arthur Machen, W.C Morrow and Aleister Crowley. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

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9781350400092

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Cocaine, Literature, and Culture presents a vital body of research and recovers lost and overlooked implications of the arrival of cocaine as both substance and metaphor. Drug history is suffused with ideological snares and retrospective impositions. Small’s approach is not simply corrective but rather helps us to grasp the powerful effect of this singular substance on the Victorian cultural imagination. * Sean A. Witters, Senior Lecturer, University of Vermont, USA *

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Douglas Small is a Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature at Edge Hill University, UK.

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