Brown cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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A bound book collection providing an unusual and rare view of late Victorian Spiritualism encapsulating the doctrine of James Burns. This is a collector’s edition of historic and social interest.

The Medium and Daybreak: A [Weekly] Journal Devoted to the History, Phenomena, Philosophy and Teachings of Spiritualism.
1870-1895 Monthly, then fortnightly, then monthly again, then, in April 1870, weekly. London, England. Editor: James Burns; James Burns, Jr. (vol. 26). Succeeds: Daybreak; 1/1, April 8, 1870-26, May 10, 1895.

To remedy the problems with Human Nature (and expand his subscription list), in the spring of 1869 James Burns bought out the provincial monthly Daybreak (June 1868-March 1870) by assuming the outstanding “few pounds of debt” incurred by Rev. John Page Hopps (1834-1911) in publishing the journal. Hopps was a newly minted spiritualist and a Unitarian minister, radical, and well-regarded poet and composer of hymns. Burns continued the journal from London, changing it from a monthly to a fortnightly and back again, searching for a successful formula. In April 1870, urged on by the American medium John Murray Spear and funded only by a £5 note left by a Mrs. E. Dickson at the Spiritual Institution, and with “no contributors, no means, no experience, no ambition, no end to serve,” Burns changed the tiny journal Daybreak into a weekly eight-page newspaper under the name Medium and Daybreak, “A Weekly Journal Devoted to the History, Phenomena, Philosophy and Teachings of Spiritualism.” Its masthead was, in its final variant, a line of beautiful spirits emerging from a dawning sun to enlighten a hoary man surrounded by dusty tomes. The journal began with 8 pp. and progressed to 16 pp. in December 1873. This was the leading weekly spiritualist periodical in England in the number of its subscribers. Frank Podmore, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, claimed that the journal had the largest circulation in Britain. Unlike its more upscale and erudite competitors, the journal was devoted to provincial middle- and laboring-class interests. Burns (1833-1894) was a true enthusiast but a poor businessman and had to resort constantly to elaborate (and fraudulent) dodges to support the journal, and at times, like so many others, he set his own type.

Spiritualism is a social religious movement popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which an individual’s awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. The afterlife, or the “spirit world”, is seen by spiritualists not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to interact and evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living on moral and ethical issues and the nature of God. Some spiritualists follow “spirit guides”—specific spirits relied upon for spiritual direction.

Emanuel Swedenborg has some claim to be the father of spiritualism. The movement developed and reached its largest following from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries. It flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. By the late 1880s the credibility of the informal movement had weakened due to accusations of fraud perpetrated by mediums, and formal spiritualist organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.