Doyle, Arthur Conan "The History of Spiritualism" [George H. Doran Company, 1926]

DOYLE, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism.

New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926. First American edition, second printing. Two volumes. 9" x 6", 329pp + 338pp. Illustrated with sixteen plates, including frontispieces, in each volume. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt. Both volumes retain bright gilt titling with moderate mottling and discoloration to the cloth, most noticeable on the spines. Each volume bears a bookplate on the front pastedown and a lengthy contemporary ownership inscription dated 1926 on the front free endpaper. Bindings sound and internally clean. Very Good.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's comprehensive history of the Spiritualist movement, written during the period in which he had become its most prominent public advocate. Drawing upon both historical sources and personal involvement, Doyle traces the development of modern Spiritualism from the Fox sisters and early American mediums through the major British and European figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Illustrated with thirty-two plates across the two volumes, the work remains one of the foundational primary sources for the study of Spiritualism, psychical research, mediumship, and the broader occult revival of the period, with substantial discussion of figures including William Crookes and Alfred Russel Wallace.