Carrier Dove, The.
An Illustrated Weekly Journal Devoted to Spiritualism and Reform.
Behold! I Bring You Glad Tidings of Great Joy
1883-1893 Monthly until 1887, weekly until 1889, then monthly
Oakland, then San Francisco, then Oakland, CA again. Publisher: Dr. Louis Schlesinger and Julia Schlesinger. Editor: Elizabeth Lowe Watson, Julia Schlesinger. Succeeded by: Pacific Coast Spiritualist
1/1, September 1883-June 1893. The journal started at 4 pp., 14 x 22, and sold for $2.00; by the 1890s it had grown to 66-82 pp, and the price had increased to $2.50. Julia Schlesinger's own account of the journal is touching: "In September, 1883, The Carrier Dove was started in Oakland, by Mrs. J. Schlesinger, as a lyceum paper. It soon outgrew its juvenile character, and assumed the proportions and nature of a first-class illustrated monthly magazine. It was the first spiritual magazine in the world that made a specialty of publishing portraits and biographical sketches of prominent Spiritualists. After being issued three years and a half as a monthly, it was changed into a weekly, but still retained its magazine form and illustrations. The Dove continued until 1893 - just ten years from its first appearance -- when the name was changed to the Pacific Coast Spiritualist, and in form it was changed to a large eight-page weekly newspaper. This publication was not as successful as the Carrier Dove, and after months of hard work on the part of the proprietors -- Dr. and Mrs. Schlesinger -- the latter's health failed completely owing to the long contained and constant taxation of body and brain and the Pacific Coast Spiritualist ceased to exist when its editor could no longer wield her pen." ["A Review of the Progress of Spiritualism," Workers in the Vineyard: A Review of the Progress of Spiritualism, Biographical Sketches, Lectures, Essays and Poems (San Francisco, CA, 1896)].

The journal was decidedly in the reform camp and itself functioned as an example of the move towards fields in which women could support themselves financially, in the case of the journal as job printers. In its last years the journal carried regular articles by E.D. Babbitt, W.E. Coleman, Helen Wilmans, Moses and Mattie Hull and Lois Waisbrooker, each volume containing pictures and biographies of leading spiritualists, novelettes, bad poetry, letters from readers, all supplemented by exhortations on woman's suffrage and the wonders of a mild socialism and utopianism, together with extended advertising pages. Most notable among the journal's content were two long series of articles by W.E. Coleman attacking H.P. Blavatsky. LOC; NY State Library; California State University, Northridge; Los Angeles Public Library; Oakland Public Library; San Francisco Public Library; University of Claifornia, San Diego; Whittier College; Southern Methodist University; University of Texas, Austin.

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