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9781009100274

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'Like us, Victorians confronted new machines that seemed to do things only humans could do. What did automata mean for that earlier technological and cultural age? This outstanding collection contributes revealing new critical perspectives and topics – including detective fiction, hypnotism, and law; gender, evolution and race – to the tortuous history of human-machine relations.' John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice, Warburg Institute, University of London

'Like us, Victorians confronted new machines that seemed to do things only humans could do. What did automata mean for that earlier technological and cultural age? This outstanding collection contributes revealing new critical perspectives and topics – including detective fiction, hypnotism, and law; gender, evolution and race – to the tortuous history of human-machine relations.' John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice, Warburg Institute, University of London 'This fascinating and thoroughly readable collection invites us into the longer histories of our own encounters with driverless cars and artificial intelligence. Revealing just how central the automaton was to nineteenth-century intellectual life, these wide-ranging essays make an invaluable - and timely - contribution to our understanding of the period, from its theories of consciousness, racial difference, and labour, to its debates over instinct and agency.' Tina Young Choi, Professor of English, York University

'This fascinating and thoroughly readable collection invites us into the longer histories of our own encounters with driverless cars and artificial intelligence. Revealing just how central the automaton was to nineteenth-century intellectual life, these wide-ranging essays make an invaluable - and timely - contribution to our understanding of the period, from its theories of consciousness, racial difference, and labour, to its debates over instinct and agency.' Tina Young Choi, Professor of English, York University 'Like us, Victorians confronted new machines that seemed to do things only humans could do. What did automata mean for that earlier technological and cultural age? This outstanding collection contributes revealing new critical perspectives and topics - including detective fiction, hypnotism, and law; gender, evolution, and race - to the tortuous history of human–machine relations.' John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice, Warburg Institute, University of London 'Suzy Anger, Thomas Vranken, and their collaborators make a much needed contribution to the field that has sometimes facetiously been dubbed 'automaton studies.' Offering a wide range of case studies and insights, they succeed simultaneously in portraying what is distinctive about automata and automatism in the Victorian age, and in inviting us to tackle time-honoured questions about humans, machines, volition, and coercion.' Heidi Voskuhl, Associate Professor of History of Science, University of Pennsylvania

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Suzy Anger teaches English and Science Technology Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is author of the Rudikoff Prize-winning Victorian Interpretation (2005), editor of Knowing the Past (1999), and co-editor of Victorian Science as Cultural Authority (2011). She is past President of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. Thomas Vranken is a lecturer in literary studies at the University of the South Pacific. His research explores nineteenth-century literature's relationship with technology and print culture. He is the author of Simulating Antiquity in Boys' Adventure Fiction: Maps and Ink Stains (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Literary Experiments in Magazine Publishing: Beyond Serialisation (2019).

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