In 1726, an illiterate woman from Surrey named Mary Toft announced that she had given birth to 17 rabbits. This study recreates the story of this incident and shows how it illuminates 18th-century beliefs about the power of imagination and the problems of personal identity.

The Fairfield Scribes worked with WestportWRITES to release an anthology of short stories written by authors local to Fairfield County, Connecticut. These pieces are in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's classic novel. The original challenge to the authors for this collection was to follow in Shelley's legendary footsteps, when Lord Byron told his guests in the summer of 1816 to "each write a ghost story." Authors include Edward Ahern, Elizabeth Chatsworth, Gabi Coatsworth, Cody Daigle-Orians, Dave D'Alessio, Alex Giannini, Roman Godzich, Sheryl Kayne, P.C. Keeler, Alison McBain, V.P. Morris, Marc Sirkin, Corrine "Mitzy Sky" Taylor, and D.J. Whitney. The stories range in theme from literary reimaginings of Mary Shelley's life, to a horror story about a woman transforming herself into a termite queen, and everything else in between. These stories are truly haunting! So crank up your alchemical machines and look out for the next thunderstorm...

An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monsters from the monster's point of view. In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won't see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing...these are the subjects of The Monster's Corner. With contributions by Lauren Groff, Chelsea Cain, Simon R. Green, Sharyn McCrumb, Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Jonathan Maberry, and many others.

This book examines the ways in which ideas about children, childhood and Ireland changed together in Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on different varieties of the child found in the work of a range of Irish Protestant writers, theologians, philosophers, educationalists, politicians and parents from the early seventeenth century up to the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion. The book is structured around a detailed examination of six ‘versions’ of the child: the evil child, the vulnerable/innocent child, the political child, the believing child, the enlightened child, and the freakish child. It traces these versions across a wide range of genres (fiction, sermons, political pamphlets, letters, educational treatises, histories, catechisms and children’s bibles), showing how concepts of childhood related to debates about Irish nationality, politics and history across these two centuries.

It’s a grey and rainy afternoon when Margaret begins her first babysitting job. But she’s stumped when none of the children are interested in her imagination games. All they want to do is play on their screens. That is, until a storm hits, and the power goes out. Stuck in the dark with nothing to do, the children finally agree to play Margaret’s games. Then something unexpected happens. Everything they imagine comes to life. Margaret and the children are transported into a fantastical world of their own creation. Together, they journey through strange lands and meet bizarre creatures. But when the children’s imaginations take a dark turn, it’s up to Margaret to get them home.

Political Monsters and Democratic Imagination explores the democratic thought of Spinoza and its relation to the thought of William Blake, Victor Hugo, and James Joyce. As a group, these visionaries articulate: a concept of power founded not on strength or might but on social cooperation; a principle of equality based not on the identity of individuals with one another but on the difference between any individual and the intellectual power of society as a whole; an understanding of thought as a process that operates between rather than within individuals; and a theory of infinite truth, something individuals only partially glimpse from their particular cultural situations. For Blake, God is the constellation of individual human beings, whose collective imagination produces revolutionary change. In Hugo's novel, Jean Valjean learns that the greatest truth about humanity lies in the sewer or among the lowest forms of social existence. For Joyce, Leopold and Molly Bloom are everybody and nobody, singular beings whose creative power and truth is beyond categories and social hierarchies.

Imagination occupies a central place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However, following a period of relative neglect there has been an explosion of interest in imagination in the past two decades as philosophers examine the role of imagination in debates about the mind and cognition, aesthetics and ethics, as well as epistemology, science and mathematics. This outstanding Handbook contains over thirty specially commissioned chapters by leading philosophers organised into six clear sections examining the most important aspects of the philosophy of imagination, including: Imagination in historical context: Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Husserl, and Sartre What is imagination? The relation between imagination and mental imagery; imagination contrasted with perception, memory, and dreaming Imagination in aesthetics: imagination and our engagement with music, art, and fiction; the problems of fictional emotions and ‘imaginative resistance’ Imagination in philosophy of mind and cognitive science: imagination and creativity, the self, action, child development, and animal cognition Imagination in ethics and political philosophy, including the concept of 'moral imagination' and empathy Imagination in epistemology and philosophy of science, including learning, thought experiments, scientific modelling, and mathematics. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, aesthetics, and ethics. It will also be a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology and art.