"What makes Pinocchio sad? Eric Wilson's twenty-first century anatomy of melancholy finds a rich psychological and philosophical nexus in imaginary androids, automata, golems, and mummies drawn from the annals of Western culture. In this provocative and wide-ranging meditation, the manufactured human becomes our understudy, enacting the age-old human tragicomedy of forever seeking--"and failing--"to connect with our mortal and immortal natures."

Eric G. Wilson is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University and the author of Coleridge's Melancholia: An Anatomy of Limbo and The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination.