SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATIONS. PRESENTING A REVELATION OF THE FUTURE LIFE, AND ILLUSTRATING AND CONFIRMING THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
Book Details + Condition: Scarce first edition from 1879 of SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATIONS. (Please see above for full title.) Edited by Henry Kiddle. Publisher's original maroon/brown cloth boards stamped in gilt and black. 350 pages, plus 10 pages of publisher advertisements. 7.5" x 5.5". Kiddle details spiritual communications, through an unnamed medium, with historical figures including Columbus, Shakespeare, Mozart, Washington, Ben Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Lincoln, and many others. In very good condition: tight binding; rubbed corners and spine ends; light shelfwear to boards; small piece of front endpaper torn and adhered to front paste-down; text is clean and unmarked save note of "Casement, 1879" on front endpaper. This inscription may refer to Casement House, built in 1870 - the Painesville, Ohio home of John Stephen Casement (Union general and builder of the Union Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1820-1909) and his wife, Frances Jennings Casement (noted suffragist, 1840-1928). The handwriting bears similarity to that of John Casement. Evidence for the Painesville history of this copy is provided by the later bookplate on the front paste-down, of Percy K. Smith (1875-1969), a prominent industrialist of that city.
The author/editor, Henry Kiddle (1824-1891) was a New York City teacher with an interest in spiritualism; in 1879, he resigned from his position of superintendent of New York schools, due to public outcry over the beliefs expressed in this book.
