review excerpts

"An exemplary book...[it] presents a capstone vision of how histories of art and science can be told together." Matthew Hunter (McGill)

"O’Rourke debuts as equal parts erudite scholar and exceptional storyteller, which is an all-too-rare gift in academic prose." Nina Amstutz (University of Oregon)

"As her wide reading and close looking show, these artists' attempts to make the body legible hit at every juncture upon instability of the self, invisibility of the causes of action, and other sources of error and indeterminacy in scientific method and Enlightenment efforts to apply it to modern life." (Andrei Pop, University of Chicago)

*Winner, The BARS First Book Prize 2023*

*Short-listed, Kenshur Prize for best book in eighteenth-century studies, 2023*

    Introduction: Bodies of Knowledge

1. De Loutherbourg's Mesmeric Effects

2. Fuseli's Physiognomic Impressions

3. Girodet's Electric Shocks

4. Self-Evidence on the Scaffold

Cambridge University Press

2021

FORMAT: Hardback

ISBN: 9781316519028

Paperback edition: October 2023