The Life Beyond the Veil: The Outlands of Heaven - Owen, 1st Ed, 1923, AFTERLIFE

First edition from 1923 of THE OUTLANDS OF HEAVEN (Volume 5 of THE LIFE BEYOND THE VEIL series). Hardcover. Octavo. 196pp, followed with Glossary. Navy cloth boards. Slight shelfwear, spine ends and corners bruised, endpapers browned, page edges darkened. A tight, clean copy. No dust jacket. After his wife developed a talent for automatic writing, the author, British clergyman Reverend G. Vale Owen (1869-1931) found himself a believer in Spiritualism and became well known in Spiritualist circles with his involvement and writing. Owen believed that he had initially been contacted by his deceased mother, and then by a number of other spirit entities, among them: Astriel, the headmaster of a school in Warwick who had lived in the mid-eighteenth century; Zabdiel - about whose Earthlife little is divulged; Kathleen, who acted as amanuensis on the spirit side and who had lived in Liverpool and had died at the age of 28, and Arnel who provides clues to his or her identity in the writings. The communications were first published by Lord Northcliffe in the London "Weekly Dispatch" during the second half of 1921, and concerned the creeds of Christendom, the relation of Christianity to Spiritualism and proofs of human survival after the death of the body. These automatic writings were later published in five volumes under the series title "Life Beyond the Veil." Like the others in the series this final volume is complete in itself, although it actually contains two separate titles "The Children of Heaven", and "The Outlands of Heaven", although oddly only "The Outlands of Heaven" is mentioned on the cover or title-page, and indeed in most descriptions of the series. Rev. Owen was forced out of ministry by the Church authorities, following which he resigned his vicarage and went on a lecture tour in America and in England, eventually settling in a pastorate of a Spiritualist congregation in London.