Hoax

The Enlightenment was a world of two halves. Colossal advances in science and technology had lit a flame of inspiration in Britain's lecture halls, in the curiosity cabinets of wealthy collectors and in the ships of the Royal Navy eager to tame the new world. But the eighteenth century was also a time of deceit, where superstition and conspiracy jostle with the new rationalism in a war for the truth. For many beyond the moneyed elite, the brilliant light of reason cast only shadows. Hoax tells the story of the shadow side of the Enlightenment, and is the first history of fraudsters in the eighteenth century. It looks beyond the corridors of power, and into the darkened alleys and locked rooms of early modern Britain, at the deception and cunning that lay beneath the veneer of rationalism. Enter a world of poltergeists and tarot cards, of tabloid scandal and moral panic, of rapping on walls and scratching on windows and ancient skeletons arranged in eerie poses. Dr Madeleine Pelling brings together true crime and social history with a rich consideration of celebrity, fame and scandal, to show the true face of the Enlightenment in all its messy contradictions.