Hlne Smith

This book retraces the story of spiritual medium Hlne Smith, a woman who came to inspire some of the greatest scientists and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bringing to light archival documents, correspondences, and publications on the medium, author Claudie Massicotte illuminates Smith's important contributions to evolving definitions of the subject during a period viewed by many as one of disenchantment. In retracing the medium's story, she explores the role of gender and occultism in modern understandings of the embodied self and its relation to the spiritual.