The idea of "necrolife" offers a conception of life that differs from conventional medical definitions and emerges from the particular institutions and aesthetic forms that accompanied death in the United States in the nineteenth century. This historical context allows one to rethink the chronology of life and death as an ongoing non-linear processes. This study examines canonical authors such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as medical manuals, embalming study guides, funeral photographs, mourning manuals and death-bed scene testimonies within the context of the...