Magic and Materialism: Fortune Telling and the Culture of Enchantment, 1919–1939

Abstract This article examines the popular visual and material culture of divination and the depiction of Romani fortune tellers in Britain from 1919 to 1939. It is concerned with how popular culture, particularly material culture marketed to and consumed by working people, was permeated with narratives of magic and occultism (especially those of “luck” or “fortune”) in the interwar period. It also explores some of the ways in which enchantment was woven into everyday life through the means of material consumption. Drawing on the Mass Observation project, which observed the lives of working-class people from “Worktown” (Bolton) on holiday in Blackpool, it explores contemporary debates about the role of popular occultism in a society increasingly defined by narratives of modernity and materiality. This study considers magazines and free gifts marketed at and consumed by young women and girls and how these cheaply made and ephemeral objects were perceived as enchanted through their association with divination. It looks at the depiction of the Romani fortune teller as part of this mass-produced culture of fortune telling and explores how the Romanichal were positioned and othered as figures of both fantasy and fear. It also considers how the figure of the Romani was deployed to create a sense of ancestral authenticity in an age when authority was increasingly conferred through narratives of modernity and science.