International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: The Summerland Messenger

Summary: From Pat Deveney's database:

Summerland Messenger.
A journal of Art Literature and Science for the Progressive Lyceum and the Family Fireside.
Other titles: Summer Land Messenger
1874-1876? Monthly
Brattleboro, VT, then Boston, and Amherst, MA. Language: English.
Editor: T.P. James.
1/1, June 1874. 75 cents a year, 16 pp., 10 x 12.

James was a "tramp printer" who settled in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he began to tout himself as "Dickens' Medium." He published Part Second of the Mystery of Edwin Drood by the Spirit-Pen of Charles Dickens (1874) and started the Summerland Messenger which printed other communications from the spirit of Dickens. The Religio-Philosophical Journal for January 2, 1875, noted that the journal in December had started a new Dickens' story, "Bockley Wicklesheep," only one segment of which, alas, has survived. The physical description of the journal is given in George P. Rowell & Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, 1876, which says the journal was begun in 1873. American Antiquarian Society.

Other Sources:
Issues:Summerland Messenger V2 N4 Mar 2 1875
Claude-Generated Themes:   The Summerland Messenger is a Spiritualist periodical taking its name from the 'Summerland,' the afterlife realm of Andrew Jackson Davis's Harmonial Philosophy, and its pages are thick with the movement's core matter — mediums, controls, seances, rappings and spirit return. Like many Spiritualist weeklies it mixes this with serialized fiction, here a Cornish ghost tale of fishermen and village intrigue. Physical mediumship and the survival of the soul in the Summerland are its central themes, with only incidental health-and-hygiene notes. The name may also point to a Summerland Spiritualist community, a possibility flagged pending confirmation.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Spiritualism