![]() ![]() Scarborough’s criticism hails from a time of genre fluidity, long before the fantastic came to be neatly categorized into the labeled boxes of “science fiction,” “fantasy,” and “horror,” and long before its history was meticulously delineated by the likes of Hugo Gernsback, J.O. But this question of nomenclature and appellation goes to the heart of why Scarborough has been called “a pioneer” and “the first academic critic of science fiction” (Westfahl 293). The last chapter stands out from the rest and prompts one to wonder if “The Scientific Supernatural” might have been a better chapter heading. ![]() Scarborough divided her book into seven chapters: The Gothic Romance, Later Influences, Modern Ghosts, The Devil and His Allies, Supernatural Life, The Supernatural in Folk-Tales, and Supernatural Science. the mass of fiction itself introducing ghostly or psychic motifs is simply enormous” (v). While there has been no previous book on the topic, and none related to it. As the author points out in the book’s preface, the sheer size of its corpus was impressive: “the supernatural in modern English fiction has been found difficult to deal with because of its wealth of material. ![]() ![]() In its day, Dorothy Scarborough’s book The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917) was considered to be the best scholarly study on the subject. DOCUMENT IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION Dorothy Scarborough Supernatural Science ![]()
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