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From Pat Deveney's database:
Occult Review, The.
A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Investigation of Supernormal Phenomena and the Study of Psychological Problems.
Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri
Other titles: The London Forum/Rider's Review
1905--1951 Monthly, then quarterly January 1936
London, England (and American edition, New York, NY).
Editor: Ralph Shirley (with Harry J. Strutton after 1915).
Publisher: William Rider and Son, Ltd.; Rider & Co..
Succeeded by: London Forum-->The Occult Review-->Rider's Review
1/1, January 1905-58/2, August 1933; published as The London Forum from September 1933 to October 1935, and then returned in 1936 to Occult Review (incorporating the London Forum). In 1938 it reverted to the original title, and in 1949 it became Rider's Review. A US edition of the journal was published from New York one month in arrears of the British edition from 1907 to 1932, beginning with vol. 5, January 1907, which reproduced vol. 5, December 1906, of the British edition. The American edition is distinguishable only by the issue price on the cover, which is given in cents (and occasionally in cents and shillings), and by the fact that beginning in 1910 the American edition had a blue cover rather then the red cover of the British edition. 48-70 pp., 6 x 9. Seven shillings a year, sixpence-one shilling or 30 cents a copy. This was undoubtedly the pre-eminent English-language occult journal of the first quarter of the twentieth century because of the scope and quality of its contributors: A.E. Waite, C.G. Harrison, Franz Hartmann, W. Gorn Old, Andrew Lang, E.W. Berridge, Isabelle de Steiger, Oliver Lodge, J.M. Peebles, Robert Hugh Benson, Hereward Carrington, H. Stanley Redgrove, Mabel Collins, Arthur Avalon, Algernon Blackwood, W.J. Colville, Montague Summers, Sax Rohmer, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Theodore Besterman, and many others. The journal carried articles and reviews, both antiquarian and (occasionally) practical but rarely dogmatic, on every possible occult and spiritualist topic, including ones on John Dee, vampirism, scrying, Sri Agamya Guru Paramahamza (who has an indirect influence on the beginnings of the O.T.O., the Ordo Templi Orientis), "Mr. Isaacs of Simla," J.M. Peebles (his very curious Spirit Mates), Bram Stoker, Aleister Crowley, Victor Neuberg, and many more, all written in the literate and dry style of the era. Of one of R.S. Clymer's works, for example, a reviewer noted that "on careful consideration one feels inclined to say that what is true in it is not new, and what is new is not true." Shirley not only edited the Occult Review but was also the owner of Rider & Co., and was thus a pivotal figure in occult publishing. As "Rollo Ireton," he had earlier published The Horoscope. NYPL; LOC; BNF; ZDB: Freiburg Inst Grenzgeb Psychol; Frankfurt/M UB.
Generally (but not always) the UK and foreign editions can be distinguished by the color of their covers: orange for the UK, blue for the foreign. Similarly, the issues are denominated in different currencies: shillings and pence for the UK, and cents for the foreign edition. The differences in content between any one issue across the two editions are substantial. As a general rule, the articles from Issue X of the UK edition appeared in Issue X+1 of the Foreign edition, but you should not assume that rule is always in force.
Indices are available for the UK and foreign editions. In this archive, the editions are denoted by either UK or FOR in their file names. Additionally, the file names denote whether an issue has a cover (C) or not (NC), and whether an issue includes the advertising/wrappers for the issue (W) or not (NW). Librarians were in the habit of stripping both covers and wrappers before binding issues into volumes, and much is therefore lost for those issues: particularly for the UK issues, which interspersed advertising and material in the back of each issue, often on unnumbered pages.
An index of the periodical's articles between 1905 and 1948 is available.
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