Amanda Shubert, Seeing Things: Virtual Aesthetics in Victorian Culture (Cornell University Press, 2025).
A cultural history of nineteenth-century media imaginaries, Seeing Things tells
the story of how Victorians experienced the virtual images created by modern
optical technologies—magic lanterns, stereoscopes, phenakistoscopes,
museum displays, and illusionistic stage magic.Amanda Shubert argues that
interactions with these devices gave rise to a new virtual aesthetics—an
understanding of visual and perceptual encounters with things that are not
really there.