Fictional Representations
- Haslam's Key, a play written by journalist Danny O'Brien and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1993, imagined Matthews as a forerunner of modern science fiction authors. The titular "key" was a wooden spoon-like device invented by John Haslam, the documenter of Matthew's delusions, which was used to force-feed Bedlam patients.
- Richard Hayden's novel The Influencing Engine (1996) is a fantasy loosely based on aspects of Matthews' life.
- In 2002, the British artist Rod Dickinson built a re-creation of the air loom from Matthews' original plans.
- Greg Hollingshead's novel Bedlam (2004) concerns the changing relationship between John Haslam and Matthews and is narrated in first-person from the perspective of Haslam, Matthews, and Matthews' wife.
- The CSI episode "Lab Rats" (2007), Grissom uses Matthews' condition as an analogy in describing The Miniature Killer, a serial killer obsessed with bleach.
- Robert Rankin's 2007 novel, The Da-da-de-da-da Code, features a group of villains known as the Air Loom Gang, as well as a doctor named Doctor Archy, a character known as "The Middleman" and a beer called "King Billy".
- The first album from British band The Lowland Hundred features a song called "The Air Loom", which references the affair.
Read more about this topic: James Tilly Matthews
Famous quotes containing the word fictional:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)