1/1, January 1860-1877; new series, 2/1 January 1866, and 3/1, January 1875. 48 pp., x 8. Six pence a copy.

A thoughtful and educated approach to spiritualism, with more than a tinge of the influence of Swedenborg. (William Wilkinson was a member of the New Church.) Unlike many of its contemporary journals (especially those in America), The Spiritual Magazine avoided becoming enthralled by one or the other of the various -isms (Phrenology, free love, socialism) that had accompanied spiritualism, and tried to concentrate on the communications from the spirits, explorations of the spiritual side of man’s nature, and long disquisitions on the historical antecedents of spiritualism in Mormonism, the Shakers, etc. James Burns ( -1895) took over the journal in December 1869, but it never achieved the popularity of his Medium and Daybreak--though it was said implausibly at one time to have 15,000 subscribers. The journal abounds in references to and contributions from D.D. Home, T.L. Harris, Jacob Dixon, Thomas and Sarah Welton, Mary Gove Nichols, A.-L. Cahagnet, Hargrave Jennings, Dr. Ashburner, Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie, Jennie Ferris Holmes, P.B. Randolph, Benjamin Coleman, Emma Hardinge [Britten], Robert and Robert Dale Owen, and to psychotropic drugs, magic mirrors, anti-slavery matters, auras around flowers, spirit paintings, and guardian angels. William Howitt (1792-1879), a Quaker, poet and gold-field explorer in Australia, was the main contributor to the early journal. In 1875 and 1876 the journal was edited by Dr. George Sexton, a free thinker and atheist, who was converted to spiritualism and then abandoned it "because of its anti-Christian character . . . ." Spiritualist 12/22 (May 31, 1878): 254. On Sexton’s conversion to spiritualism, see "A Secularist Leader Converted to Spiritualism," Spiritual Magazine (November 1872): 520-21; Sexton, "Wie ich ein Spiritualist wurde," Psychische Studien 1/2 (February 1874): 75-83. Sexton also edited The Christian Spiritualist and was a regular contributor to The Spiritual Scientist. The last editor, John Enmore Jones, preserved the Christian tone but turned the journal more towards Mesmerism.