The Spiritualist Encyclopedia

One would have thought that the trials of publication-by-subscription would have worn Emma out by the 1890s. Apparently not. Or else she found it was the only way to get her product to market.

As reported in the January 2007 issue of Psypioneer, Emma had plans for another omnibus, The Spiritualist Encyclopedia, which she abandoned -- possibly handing it off to a co-worker -- when she was unable to collect the required number of subscriptions.

As the extract below, from James Coates' Photographing The Invisible (1911) hints, the manuscript for The Spiritualist Encyclopedia may have been in sister Margaret's possession as late as 1910 or so.

I wonder -- and perhaps I'm the only one who does -- whether the odd document called The Two Worlds Album, which was issued in 1897, clearly under the aegis of EHB, is some kind of stripped-down, or hacked-up version of The Spiritualist Encyclopedia -- whether in fact, when we look at the marvelous faces and profiles in that album (as well as the adverts at the back) if we aren't in fact looking at the 90-odd folks who did pony up for a copy of The Spiritualist Encyclopedia. If so, it must have been crushing for her.