This book explores the life and fiction of the French decadent writer Rachilde (pen name of Marguerite Eymery), using her as a case study to examine the impact late nineteenth-century theories about female hysteria, medical hypnotism, mediums, and spiritualism had on the female creative psyche. Rachilde was especially vulnerable as she suffered hysterical attacks, witnessed a hypnotism craze in France, and was the only child in a family of table-tapping...