1871 SPIRITUAL ANALYST. The Faux-Poe. New Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Delivered Post-Mortem.

A very nice sammeband containing a four-month run of The Spiritual Analyst from 1871, a prospectus for the magazine, and a final, separately issued work by the editor. All of these issued during the post Civil War boom in American Spiritualism.

Edited by John H. W. Toohey, a prominent Spiritualist lecturer and radical reformer, this short-lived periodical captures the movement's intense effort to legitimize itself not as a mystical parlor trick, but as a rigorous, modern synthesis of science, philosophy, and progressive religion. The inclusion of articles like "The Dualism of Theology and Science" and a critique of the Scientific American perfectly illustrates this friction. Spiritualists of this era were desperate to prove that "spirit manifestations" operated under natural laws rather than supernatural miracles, pushing back against the era's rising secular materialism and orthodox Christian hostility alike. The piece on John Wetherbee’s "Nerve Atmosphere" highlights how mediums co-opted contemporary scientific vocabulary, like electricity and invisible forces, to explain telepathy and spirit projection.

Furthermore, the publication serves as a fascinating record of Spiritualism's intersection with 19th-century literature and reform. It documents the ongoing radicalization of New England Unitarianism through figures like the reformer John Pierpont speaking from "beyond the grave." It also features the controversial "post-mortem" poetry of Edgar Allan Poe channeled through Thomas Lake Harris, demonstrating how Spiritualists used the authority of deceased literary giants to validate their theology. 

The three items:

Toohey, J. H. W. A Prospectus for The Spiritual Analyst. W. F. Brown & Co. 1871. 2pp.

Printed on salmon paper, double sided, with a detailed explanation of the role of spiritual experience as primary over and against theology, and laying the groundwork for the approach of the periodical. Loosely inserted.

[Bound with]

Toohey, J. H. W. [Ed.] The Spiritual Analyst. June through September, 1871. 

Contents include: The Dualism of Theology and Science; Nature Aphoristically Described by Goethe, and Translated by T. H. Huxley; Illumination, or, The Sleep-Walker by Heinrich Zochokke [Series]; The Spiritual Poems of Edgar Allan Poe [Delivered through Spiritualist, T. L. Harris]; Spiritual Doubles; A Seven Days' Trance; Is Christianity a Finality or a Failure?; Communion with Nature; Where are the Dead? Consciousness by John Pierpont; Biblical Spiritualism; The Massachusetts Spiritualists Convention; Spiritualism - Ancient and Modern; The Fountain with Jets of New Meaning by Edward S. Wheeler [on Andrew Jackson Davis]; The Stigmata and the Bloody Sweat; Are the Spirit Manifestations Dying Out?; Nerve Atmosphere by John Wetherbee; There is No Death; The Spiritual Analyst and what is Said of It; The Scientific American not Quite Scientific; etc.

The Faux-Poe poems include The Experience of a Poet in Hades and Song of Deliverance. 

[Bound with]

Toohey, J. H. W. A Reivew of Rev. I. E. Dinwell's Sermon Against Spiritualism. Boston. Bela Marsh. 1857 48pp.

All three items presented in a heavily rubbed half leather binding, spine singed and some dampstaining throughout, likely involved in a fire at some point. The prospectus a bit chipped and stained; we do not trace another example. The text of the other two in good order, though with various evidences of staining throughout. All three items scarce.