Multiplying Worlds

Multiplying Worlds argues that modern forms of virtual reality first appear in the urban/commercial milieu of London in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century (1780-1830). To establish this aetiology of perhaps the most important phenomenon of the digital age, it maps the emergence of virtual realities in popular entertainment, Enlightenment schemes for managing the real, and Romantic literature and art. These historical studies reveal the extent to which contemporary discourses of virtual reality are shaped by assumptions that date from the romantic period.