1859 First Edition With Provenance
SPIRITUALISM, AND THE AGE WE LIVE IN
By Catherine Crowe
KEY DETAILS
Condition: Good
Format: Hardcover, Small/Crown octavo (8vo 5 3⁄8 × 8 in 137 × 203 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: T.C. Newby, London, 1859
Language: English
Provenance: Britten Memorial Library, Manchester, with the Library’s large pictorial bookplate to the front pastedown incorporating a portrait of Emma Hardinge Britten. The bookplate is dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
Collation: iv, 143, [16] pp. Complete.
SKU: BTETM0002633
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request
DESCRIPTION
Spiritualism, and The Age We Live In
8vo. Original publisher’s dark blue-purple pebble-grain cloth, boards elaborately decorated in blind, the upper board lettered and ornamented in gilt, spine gilt-lettered and decorated. iv, 143 pp., followed by [16] pp. publisher’s advertisements.
A scarce first edition of Catherine Crowe’s late and important defence of Spiritualism, published in 1859 at the height of the Victorian debate over science, religion and the possibility of an unseen world.
Crowe, already celebrated for The Night Side of Nature (1848), here argues against the assumption that contemporary science had established the limits of possible natural phenomena. Rather than presenting Spiritualism simply as supernatural intervention, she proposes that apparently inexplicable manifestations may operate according to laws of nature not yet understood.
The work consequently occupies an intriguing position between Victorian supernatural literature, religious controversy and the emerging investigation of psychical phenomena. Crowe attacks both uncompromising materialism and unquestioning religious dogmatism, questioning the intellectual consistency of accepting miraculous events described in scripture while refusing even to investigate contemporary reports of extraordinary phenomena.
Published in the same year as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In belongs to a remarkable period in which established ideas concerning religion, natural law and humanity’s place in the universe were being subjected to increasingly vigorous examination.
This copy retains the sixteen-page T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue bound at the rear, advertising contemporary and forthcoming publications.
PROVENANCE
Britten Memorial Library, Manchester, with the Library’s large pictorial bookplate to the front pastedown incorporating a portrait of Emma Hardinge Britten. The bookplate is dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
The Britten Memorial Library was an important institutional collection devoted to Spiritualism and related literature and was named in commemoration of Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899), the influential Spiritualist lecturer, writer and organiser.
The dated acquisition mark establishes that this particular copy was purchased for the Britten Memorial Library in 1931. It does not indicate that the book formed part of Emma Hardinge Britten’s personal library.
The association is nevertheless particularly appropriate: both Crowe and Britten were significant women within the nineteenth-century development and dissemination of Spiritualist ideas, and the provenance places this copy within the institutional collecting history of the movement itself.
CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
Original publisher’s dark blue-purple pebble-grain cloth, elaborately blind-stamped to both boards, with gilt title and decoration to the upper board and spine. Cloth rubbed and marked, with wear to the extremities and spine ends and some loss of surface colour; gilt remains distinct and attractive.
Binding sound.
Scattered spotting internally, generally light within the principal text but more noticeable in places and within the publisher’s catalogue.
Title page with scattered spotting and minor creasing/chipping at the lower outer corner.
An irregular area of old brown staining or adhesive residue, with associated surface abrasion, occurs at the upper outer margin of p.133. This remains clear of the printed text.
Minor marginal corner wear and occasional handling marks elsewhere consistent with age and institutional use.
Britten Memorial Library pictorial bookplate to front pastedown, dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
Please see Photos as part of condition report.
REFERENCES
Contemporary and institutional bibliographical records describe the first edition as London: T. C. Newby, 1859, 8vo, iv, 143 pp.
Society for Psychical Research historical library catalogue records: Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In, 8vo, iv, 143 pp., London, 1859.
The survival of the additional [16] pp. T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue in the present copy supplements the conventional bibliographical collation.
SYNOPSIS
Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In is Catherine Crowe’s concise examination of the intellectual and religious implications of Spiritualism during one of the most transformative periods of nineteenth-century thought.
Crowe challenges the tendency of contemporary materialists to reject reports of spiritual or apparently supernatural phenomena solely because they fall outside accepted scientific explanation. Human knowledge, she argues, is necessarily incomplete; phenomena presently regarded as impossible may ultimately prove to operate according to natural laws that have simply not yet been identified.
Her argument is therefore less an appeal for unquestioning belief than a demand for intellectual openness. Crowe repeatedly questions the assumption that absence of explanation amounts to proof of impossibility.
At the same time she directs criticism towards conventional religious orthodoxy. If miraculous and spiritual events described in scripture are accepted as genuine, she asks, upon what rational basis should reports of comparable phenomena in the modern world be dismissed without investigation?
The book consequently sits at the intersection of several major Victorian concerns: the relationship between science and faith, changing interpretations of scripture, the limits of materialism, the survival of consciousness, and the increasingly organised investigation of mediums and psychic phenomena.
Appearing in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the book belongs to a moment when traditional explanations of nature and humanity were under exceptional intellectual pressure. Crowe’s response was neither orthodox Christianity nor reductive materialism, but an insistence that the boundaries of natural knowledge remained far from settled.
For collectors, the work is particularly significant as a later contribution by the author of The Night Side of Nature, one of the foundational Victorian compilations of supernatural testimony, and as an early British contribution to the literature surrounding the developing Spiritualist movement.
The present copy is additionally distinguished by its 1931 Britten Memorial Library provenance and by retention of the sixteen-page T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue.
AUTHOR BIO
Catherine Ann Crowe (1790–1872) was an English novelist, dramatist and writer on supernatural phenomena whose work played an important role in the development of Victorian interest in ghosts, apparitions, mesmerism and related phenomena.
Her best-known work, The Night Side of Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers (1848), assembled a large body of historical and contemporary testimony concerning apparitions and supernatural experiences. It became one of the most influential English-language collections of its kind during the nineteenth century and helped establish Crowe as an important figure in the literature preceding and accompanying the rise of organised Spiritualism.
Crowe approached supernatural reports with a combination of credulity, curiosity and an insistence that unexplained phenomena deserved investigation rather than automatic dismissal. Her writings reflect a broader Victorian fascination with the possibility that apparently supernatural events might eventually prove compatible with undiscovered natural laws.
By the time Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In appeared in 1859, the Spiritualist movement had developed rapidly in Britain and the United States. Crowe’s short work addresses the philosophical implications of that movement directly, placing her earlier fascination with supernatural testimony within the wider Victorian debate over science, religion and human survival after death.
1859 First Edition With Provenance
SPIRITUALISM, AND THE AGE WE LIVE IN
By Catherine Crowe
KEY DETAILS
Condition: Good
Format: Hardcover, Small/Crown octavo (8vo 5 3⁄8 × 8 in 137 × 203 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: T.C. Newby, London, 1859
Language: English
Provenance: Britten Memorial Library, Manchester, with the Library’s large pictorial bookplate to the front pastedown incorporating a portrait of Emma Hardinge Britten. The bookplate is dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
Collation: iv, 143, [16] pp. Complete.
SKU: BTETM0002633
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request
DESCRIPTION
Spiritualism, and The Age We Live In
8vo. Original publisher’s dark blue-purple pebble-grain cloth, boards elaborately decorated in blind, the upper board lettered and ornamented in gilt, spine gilt-lettered and decorated. iv, 143 pp., followed by [16] pp. publisher’s advertisements.
A scarce first edition of Catherine Crowe’s late and important defence of Spiritualism, published in 1859 at the height of the Victorian debate over science, religion and the possibility of an unseen world.
Crowe, already celebrated for The Night Side of Nature (1848), here argues against the assumption that contemporary science had established the limits of possible natural phenomena. Rather than presenting Spiritualism simply as supernatural intervention, she proposes that apparently inexplicable manifestations may operate according to laws of nature not yet understood.
The work consequently occupies an intriguing position between Victorian supernatural literature, religious controversy and the emerging investigation of psychical phenomena. Crowe attacks both uncompromising materialism and unquestioning religious dogmatism, questioning the intellectual consistency of accepting miraculous events described in scripture while refusing even to investigate contemporary reports of extraordinary phenomena.
Published in the same year as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In belongs to a remarkable period in which established ideas concerning religion, natural law and humanity’s place in the universe were being subjected to increasingly vigorous examination.
This copy retains the sixteen-page T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue bound at the rear, advertising contemporary and forthcoming publications.
PROVENANCE
Britten Memorial Library, Manchester, with the Library’s large pictorial bookplate to the front pastedown incorporating a portrait of Emma Hardinge Britten. The bookplate is dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
The Britten Memorial Library was an important institutional collection devoted to Spiritualism and related literature and was named in commemoration of Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899), the influential Spiritualist lecturer, writer and organiser.
The dated acquisition mark establishes that this particular copy was purchased for the Britten Memorial Library in 1931. It does not indicate that the book formed part of Emma Hardinge Britten’s personal library.
The association is nevertheless particularly appropriate: both Crowe and Britten were significant women within the nineteenth-century development and dissemination of Spiritualist ideas, and the provenance places this copy within the institutional collecting history of the movement itself.
CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
Original publisher’s dark blue-purple pebble-grain cloth, elaborately blind-stamped to both boards, with gilt title and decoration to the upper board and spine. Cloth rubbed and marked, with wear to the extremities and spine ends and some loss of surface colour; gilt remains distinct and attractive.
Binding sound.
Scattered spotting internally, generally light within the principal text but more noticeable in places and within the publisher’s catalogue.
Title page with scattered spotting and minor creasing/chipping at the lower outer corner.
An irregular area of old brown staining or adhesive residue, with associated surface abrasion, occurs at the upper outer margin of p.133. This remains clear of the printed text.
Minor marginal corner wear and occasional handling marks elsewhere consistent with age and institutional use.
Britten Memorial Library pictorial bookplate to front pastedown, dated 1931 and stamped “Purchased.”
Please see Photos as part of condition report.
REFERENCES
Contemporary and institutional bibliographical records describe the first edition as London: T. C. Newby, 1859, 8vo, iv, 143 pp.
Society for Psychical Research historical library catalogue records: Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In, 8vo, iv, 143 pp., London, 1859.
The survival of the additional [16] pp. T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue in the present copy supplements the conventional bibliographical collation.
SYNOPSIS
Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In is Catherine Crowe’s concise examination of the intellectual and religious implications of Spiritualism during one of the most transformative periods of nineteenth-century thought.
Crowe challenges the tendency of contemporary materialists to reject reports of spiritual or apparently supernatural phenomena solely because they fall outside accepted scientific explanation. Human knowledge, she argues, is necessarily incomplete; phenomena presently regarded as impossible may ultimately prove to operate according to natural laws that have simply not yet been identified.
Her argument is therefore less an appeal for unquestioning belief than a demand for intellectual openness. Crowe repeatedly questions the assumption that absence of explanation amounts to proof of impossibility.
At the same time she directs criticism towards conventional religious orthodoxy. If miraculous and spiritual events described in scripture are accepted as genuine, she asks, upon what rational basis should reports of comparable phenomena in the modern world be dismissed without investigation?
The book consequently sits at the intersection of several major Victorian concerns: the relationship between science and faith, changing interpretations of scripture, the limits of materialism, the survival of consciousness, and the increasingly organised investigation of mediums and psychic phenomena.
Appearing in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the book belongs to a moment when traditional explanations of nature and humanity were under exceptional intellectual pressure. Crowe’s response was neither orthodox Christianity nor reductive materialism, but an insistence that the boundaries of natural knowledge remained far from settled.
For collectors, the work is particularly significant as a later contribution by the author of The Night Side of Nature, one of the foundational Victorian compilations of supernatural testimony, and as an early British contribution to the literature surrounding the developing Spiritualist movement.
The present copy is additionally distinguished by its 1931 Britten Memorial Library provenance and by retention of the sixteen-page T. C. Newby publisher’s catalogue.
AUTHOR BIO
Catherine Ann Crowe (1790–1872) was an English novelist, dramatist and writer on supernatural phenomena whose work played an important role in the development of Victorian interest in ghosts, apparitions, mesmerism and related phenomena.
Her best-known work, The Night Side of Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers (1848), assembled a large body of historical and contemporary testimony concerning apparitions and supernatural experiences. It became one of the most influential English-language collections of its kind during the nineteenth century and helped establish Crowe as an important figure in the literature preceding and accompanying the rise of organised Spiritualism.
Crowe approached supernatural reports with a combination of credulity, curiosity and an insistence that unexplained phenomena deserved investigation rather than automatic dismissal. Her writings reflect a broader Victorian fascination with the possibility that apparently supernatural events might eventually prove compatible with undiscovered natural laws.
By the time Spiritualism, and the Age We Live In appeared in 1859, the Spiritualist movement had developed rapidly in Britain and the United States. Crowe’s short work addresses the philosophical implications of that movement directly, placing her earlier fascination with supernatural testimony within the wider Victorian debate over science, religion and human survival after death.
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