Founded by Dawson Rogers and W. Stainton Moses after the British National Association of Spiritualists fell into disarray and discord, along with The Spiritualist Newspaper which had been its de facto organ. For a time the small monthly Spiritual Notes served that purpose, and then Rogers and Moses and other like-minded spiritualists started this journal for their wing of the BNAS, the Central Association of Spiritualists. At first it appeared alongside the Spiritualist. The Eclectic Publishing Company which originally published the journal was funded by the sale of 2,000 shares at one pound each. When the journal ran into financial problems in the 1890s it was rescued by Arthur Conan Doyle, who made substantial anonymous gifts (and later edited the journal for a period). This was the preeminent spiritualist journal in England for more than a century, directed, unlike its contemporaries the Medium and Daybreak and The Two Worlds, more to the educated, less avowedly Christian and more urbane classes of London than to working-class or provincial audiences. At various times between its inception and World War I, the circulation of the journal is estimated to have been in the range of 5,000-7,500, though that number is based on extrapolation from donations reported in the journal and the actual number is probably lower.