Title: Spiritual Age, The.
Sub Title: Devoted to Rational Spiritualism and Practical Reform.
Motto: Light! More Light! Progression
Publication Date: 1858--Publication Ended: 1860
Periodicity: Weekly
Location: Boston, MA, New York, NY, Chicago, IL.
Editor: S.B. Brittan and Alonzo E. Newton, editors, Lewis B. Monroe, associate editor and business manager; S.B. Brittan and W.H. Chaney (September 1859); then W.H. Chaney alone (November 1859-January 1860) with A.E. Newton as editorial contributor; then Newton alone.
Publisher: W.H. Chaney & Co.
Succeeds: Spiritual Age (New York) and New England Spiritualist (merged to form The Spiritual Age); Age of Progress (incorporated in August 1858)
Succeeded by: Spiritual Eclectic

Description: 1/1 January 2, 1858--1/24, February 11, 1860. 4 (then 8) pp., 20 x 24. $2.00 a year "payable in advance" (changed to "payable strictly in advance" in 1859, presumably on the basis of bitter experience). The first issue of this journal was called vol. 1, no. 1 of a "new series," suggesting to the public that it was a continuation of the journal of the same name published by S.B. Brittan in New York and Philadelphia for 25 issues in 1857 (q.v.). This new series, published in Boston but listing agencies in New York and Chicago, was the combination of that journal with A.E. Newton's New England Spiritualist. The owner and publisher are not listed but certainly included Brittan and Newton, with both listed as editors. The volume and issue numbering were reset again in September 1859, with vol. 2, no. 35 being called vol. 1, no. 1 of a "quarto series." The change marked the disappearance of Brittan and the appearance of W.H. Chaney & Co. as owner and publisher. This was a partnership of Chaney, Fenelon Greeley Barker, and Alvan Dinsmore Brock (1830-1900), a Maine entrepreneur, printer and publisher, and listed Chaney as editor and Newton as "editorial contributor." This arrangement, too, did not last and in January 1860 Chaney dissolved the partnership and withdrew. He explained his decision in the issue of January 7, 1860, complaining of the "ultra" and "sectional" views and "northern fanaticism" that was animating the journal. "While he pitied John Brown for his madness and fanaticism, he most emphatically disapproved the spirit at the north which would have made Brown a martyr and the ‘gallows' a rival of the ‘cross.'" Brock replaced him as publisher but the journal ceased with the issue of February 11, 1860, and in April Brock's offices and printing facility in Maine, where the journal was produced, were destroyed by fire, putting a final end to the venture, although Brittan, after a few months, started the Spiritual Eclectic, which ceased after seven numbers.

The precarious financial status of this journal is illustrative of the condition of spiritualist journals generally in the period. On April 25, 1857, Charles Partridge wrote "Statistics of Spiritual Periodicals" in the Spiritual Telegraph on the occasion of S.B. Brittan's withdrawal from the journal, and noted that internationally up to that date 39 journals had been begun, 21 of which had ceased, leaving in 1857 only 18, of which all but three had expired by the time he revisited the subject in the last issue of the Telegraph in February 1860. Between 1857 and 1860 another 11 journals had appeared internationally, including the Spiritual Age, three of which had expired, making "the number now extant twelve, six less than there were in 1857; and we think there are still ten too many; but time will show." The trend continued, even after the temporary revival of interest in spiritualism after the War Between the States.

The journal reflected Newton's New England Spiritualist and the Spiritual Telegraph in publishing short articles and numerous records of remarkable seances, and displayed Brittan's liking for lengthy and serious discussions, like Miss C. Beebe's "The Beauty of the Spirit-Heaven" and "An Important Discovery: Spirits Not Infallible!" The journal also waded into the great debate at the end of the 1850s over "vagabond mediums," the confidence men (and women) and opportunists, drawn to the life of easy morals and supporting themselves on the enthusiasm and gullibility of the small towns and proclaiming a new and more perfect day of social justice and freedom. Ugo Clark's Spiritual Clarion began the crusade by condemning the itinerant spiritualist mediums and lecturers who tried to bring down "‘kingdom of heaven’s ideas of liberty and love, and make them applicable to the social and material plane of life." These adventurers were "reckless, rapacious, and in danger of running into extremes of license more deplorable than the evils existing in the present state of society," "idle, "lazy, miserable vagabonds claiming to be Reformers." This journal timidly agreed, but cautioned against uprooting the wheat with the tares. It also carried, beginning in January 1859, a long essay on women's dress and dress reform by Emma Hardinge [Britten], topics of vast public interest at the time, and regularly printed articles by Hardinge. It also carried numerous letters from readers and mediums, and printed the transcript of the Rutland Free Convention of 1858. Chaney graced the renewed journal with his "Minnie, the Medium; or, Spiritualism in Germany," and in January 1860 the journal began the serialization of "Dhoula Bel; or the Magic Globe" by "The Rosicrucian" (Paschal Beverly Randolph), which was left incomplete when the journal expired in February. The journal carried contributions by LaRoy Sunderland, Austin Kent, Henry Ward Beecher, W.R. Hayden, H.F. Gardner, and all the leading spiritualist and reform figures of the era and featured numerous advertisements for lecturers, mediums, inventions, quack medicine and doctors, instructions on Vital Electricity, Electro-Physiology, Animal Magnetism, Psychology, Mental Telegraphing, etc., spiritualist rest homes, clairvoyants, etc. As the journal declined it increasingly filled its pages with its "Interesting Miscellany," excerpts of general interest from other journals ("Rattlesnake Bites and their Treatment," etc).

On Samuel Byron Brittan (1815-1883), see the notes under Univercoelum, Shekinah, Spiritual Telegraph, etc., and on William Henry Chaney (1821-1903), see the notes under Common Sense, the Philomathean, World of Mystery and Science of Life, and Chaney's Annual, and also see "The Flinty-Hearted Calculator: Some Notes on W.H. Chaney (1821-1903)" in ehbritten.blogspot.com/2019/01.