Mary Hillier, Automata and Mechanical Toys, Bloomsbury 
            London 1988 (1976) good general introduction
          Steven Connor, Dumbstruck A Cultural History of Ventriloquism, OUP Oxford 200 and a fine study of the creepiness of it all. See also 
            Danny Kaye in Knock on Wood.
          Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium, Materialism and Modern Lyric University of California Press, berkeley and London 2000, a broad 
            and well structured argument about the materiality of things, and 
            with wsections on the Philosophy of Toys.
          Harold Segel, Pinocchio's Progeny, Puppets, marionettes, 
            Auotmata and Robots in Modernist and Avant-garde Drama, The 
            John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1995
          Scott Shershow, Puppets and 'Popular Culture' Cornell 
            Universoty Press, Ithaca and London 1995.
          S. Bann (ed) Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity, 
            Reaktion, London 1994
          Richard Kendall, Degas and the Little Dancer, Yale, 
            New Haven 1998, an exhibition catalogue for Baltimore and others.