Includes bibliographical references and index. - Alchemy, androgyny and utopianism -- Alchemists : self-portraits and interpretations -- William Godwin and his Necromancers -- William Godwin's St Leon (1799) -- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) -- Edward Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni (1842) -- George Lippard's Paul Ardenheim (1848) -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's The scarlet letter (1850) -- Herman Melville's Pierre (1852) -- The birth and death of the romantic alchemist