While the Victorian era saw many empirical scientific advancements, late-Victorian fiction began to ‘merge the chemist and biologist in the alchemist and the magician’ (Nesbit, ‘Five’ 162); fiction provided a space in which science was imagined thoroughly re-enchanted through alchemical narratives, echoing the Victorian occult and spiritual resurgence. Existing research on alchemy has predominantly focused on early-modern revivals – including Eggert’s (2015) and Yates’s (2001) examinations of Renaissance alchemy in relation to Baconian empiricism – the alignment of late-Victorian discoveries like radioactivity with the alchemical revival (Morrison, 2007), and alchemy’s ties to modern chemistry (Principe, 2012). Recent work by Alder (2020) and Dobson (2022) begins to examine fictional representations of alchemy to understand its marginal status in Victorian culture, but fiction’s role in bridging the perceived gap between science and mysticism at this juncture has not yet been fully illuminated. Attentive to alchemy’s ambivalent role as both spiritual and chemical practice, I will build upon the aforementioned scholarship, demonstrating how fiction offered a blank canvas for imagining alchemical possibilities in cutting-edge science. Through challenging scientific boundaries, alchemy re-enchants Victorian science, exploring its potential as a stabilising force amid change.

My project addresses the question: How does late-Victorian fiction articulate the revival of alchemy and portray its role in re-enchanting contemporary science? This question is underpinned by several objectives, which include establishing key motivations behind the resurgence of laboratory-based and Paracelsian-inspired (medical) alchemical practices during this period, and the employment of alchemical symbols and narratives to challenge mechanistic scientific worldviews. Additionally, this project suggests porous scientific boundaries, establishing how parallels between alchemical transmutation and modern biotechnological advancements invite the scrutiny of ethical considerations in scientific experimentation and further our understanding of historical narratives that continue to influence contemporary perspectives on science.