Ghost Land: A Further Bibliographical Note

Have been off in other realms, digging into the as-it-turns-out muck of the New York Spiritualist community of the 1850s, but today the first edition of Ghost Land arrived on my doorstep, as did a note from Paul Gaunt (on my electronic doorstep, anyway), who pointed something out to me.

Here's a view of the front cover of Paul's first edition of Ghost Land:

And here's a view of the front cover of my first edition of Ghost Land:

On its face, we have two printings of the first edition (and possibly two states), since it is highly unlikely that in a small run (of only 500? 1500?) copies the printer would have run two different covers. I've send Paul some notes on some of the idiosyncracies of my text, and we'll see if they reproduce themselves in his, but it seems clear the type for Ghost Land was stereotyped (the verso of the title page reads in part "Stereotyped and Printed by | ALFRED MURGE & SON, PRINTERS, BOSTON"), and that the edition Emma spoke of in her note to Mr. Coleman may in fact have been prepared.

Barring further data, it seems that the "blue" Ghost Land is the first printing, and the "red" Ghost Land the second printing.

And for anyone who's been wondering just how many states of the text of Ghost Land we have, the answer is: at least three. To enumerate:

1. the partial versions of the Louis de B---- text and the John Cavendish Dudley text, each serialized in The Western Star in 1872
2. the first edition of 1876 (which may have two states -- to be determined)
3. the "Premium" edition issued by the Progressive Thinker in 1897

I have done a quick collation of the first seven chapters of my first edition text against the first seven chapters of the 1897 "Premium" edition text, and here's a quick summary of the differences, material and otherwise.

• All italics and FULL CAPS in the 1876 edition are dropped in the 1897 edition -- the original emphasis thus entirely lost.
• Chapter content summaries are substantially different between the two editions (and the chapter summaries in the table of contents for the first edition do not match the actual chapter headings in many cases)
• Many of the editor's footnotes in the first edition are silently deleted from the 1897 edition
• An extended quotation from Philip James Bailey's Festus (the signal work of the so-called Spasmodic movement in poetry) which heads Chapter Two in the first edition, is silently deleted from the 1879 edition.
• Several sentences, most of them at the end of paragraphs, present in the first edition, are struck from the text of the 1879 edition

(The reference to Philip James Bailey's poem is interesting in two regards: (1) as Bailey revised Festus extensively from its first -- anonymous -- publication in 1839 until its Jubilee edition in 1889, there's a chance we can date the creation of at least part of the Ghost Land text based on the quotation; (2) it had never struck me until tonight just how close the doctrine of Modern Spiritualism, particularly its claim to be a religion based on reason rather than superstition, aligns with the religion described in Festus -- which of course pre-dates the Rochester events by some years.)

A partial table of contents from the first edition:

And a partial table of contents from the 1897 edition:

Update: A comparison between the texts of the "Blue" and "Red" editions indicates that, for the most part, both seem to exhibit the same stereotyping defects. It seems probable that we're looking at an American first (possibly, the blue) and an English first (the red) produced from sheets printed in the US, and shipped to the UK. I find it impossible to believe that Emma carted around the stereotypes for a 400+ page book... and then declined to make those plates available to the Progressive Thinker for the 1897 edition.