This volume presents a selection from the American and British fiction of the nineteenth century which was evolving into what we now know as science fiction.

David Seed holds a chair in the English Department of Liverpool University. He has written and edited a number of works on Science Fiction including Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors (1995) and a critical edition of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel The Coming Race. He is currently co-editor of Liverpool University Press's international Science Fiction Texts and Studies series.

VOLUME I: 1818-1858, Introduction, 1. Frankenstein, or; The Modern Prometheus, 2. 'Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman', 3. Travels in Phrenologasto, 4. 'The Metempsychosis', 5. The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, 6. 'Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, L.L.D, F.R.S, &c. at The Cape of Good Hope', 7. 'The New Frankenstein', 8. Sturmer: A Tale of Mesmerism, 9. 'The Artist of the Beautiful', 10. 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar', 11. 'The Diamond Lens', 12. 'The Lifted Veil', 13. A Strange Story, 14. 'The Case of George Dedlow', 15. The Huge Hunter; or, The Steam Man of the Prairies, 16. 'The Case of Summerfield', 17. 'The Automaton Ear', 18. The Age of Science: A Newspaper of the Twentieth Century, 19. 'The Man-Ufactory', 20. 'An Automatic Enigma', 21. 'The Ablest Man in the World', Bibliography, Appendix: 'Science-Fiction', Index