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.

Ghost Land: Bibliographical Note

For those of you who've wondered (as I have) whether the 1897 edition of Ghost Land was run from the same plates as the 1876 edition, the answer is: no.

With the generous help of Patrick Elliott of Madoc Books, I've been able to determine that the text of the 1876 "Premium" edition of Ghost Land does not contain two signal flaws that are found in the 1897 edition.

• On page 301 in the 1897 edition, in Chapter XXII, in the paragraph beginning "Such was the substance..." the word "letter" spelled "leter". In the 1867 edition, that paragraph is on page 408, and "letter" is spelled properly.
• On page 337 in the 1897 edition, in Chapter XXV, in the paragraph beginning "Eight months had passed..." -- the word "position" in the phrase "worming himself into a good official position" is repeated: "worming himself into a good official position position." In the 1876 edition, that paragraph is on Page 457, and the flaw does not occur.

While that doesn't constitute a full bibliographical review, I think the pagination change alone -- not to mention the introduction of new typeset (that is, non-plate-related) flaws -- puts to bed any notion that the 1897 edition might have been produced from extra sheets, or from plates, done at the time of the 1876 edition. So, if Olcott is correct that Emma ran 1500 copies of Art Magic for the 1876 edition, rather than the 500 copies she advertised under the terms of the subscription, she either did NOT do that with Ghost Land or the extra copies were disposed of at that time. Given the number of illustrations, and the plate preparation expense, in Art Magic, running extras while the press was set up seems commercially prudent, rather than sinister. Everything fits, it seems to me, given the palimpsest we got to look at earlier this week -- which claims a need to produce a new edition immediately (which wan't done, of course).

Cover of first edition of Ghost Land

Title page of first edition of Ghost Land

Prospectus from 1897 edition of Ghost Land

Many thanks to Patrick Elliott for his assistance. He's holding the last first edition of Ghost Land in the open market, as far as I can tell. Race you for it...

Update: I've acquired Patrick's first edition copy of Ghost Land for the Archive, and the Archive's photofacsimile edition of GL will be based on that text, rather than the 1897 text. Full textual collation will be done to determine if we have multiple states of the text -- wouldn't it be fascinating to discover that EHB revised Ghost Land between 1876 and 1897?

Louis de B----- as Defensive Routine

A note from an advisor this morning puts me in a different frame of mind. Source-hunting, as Harold Bloom says somewhere, is a carrion-eater's discipline, and I have been picking over a lot of dead carcasses of late. There are other facets to the jewel that is Emma.

In 1856, EHB claims in her Autobiography, she had her conversion experience, at the hands of Mrs. Foye. She is still acting at this time -- appearing, as far as one can tell, on the stage for the final time at the Olde Broadway in 1856 as Azurine in the play King Charming -- but she is also developing her skills as a medium, holding test sessions, and editing the Society for Diffusion of Spiritualist Knowledge/Christian Spiritualism's house rag, the Christian Spiritualist.

By the end of 1857, she has ended her association with the SDSK/CS, gone out on her own, as it were, as a both a "normal speaker" (which I take to mean "plain old propagandist") and a trace speaker (her first such public experience was in Troy, NY) and -- pointedly, for one of the central riddles of her career -- (re)met her old friend Louis de B______, putative author of Art Magic and sections of Ghost Land, in NY (passenger list carrion-eaters take note).

She had become acquainted with Louis de B_____, we are invited to accept, during her clairvoyante-Orphic Circle period (1835?-1842?).

In light of all this, what are we to make of her statements in the Autobiography that she experiences "intense disgust" and affront at the slighting of the Bible by the early spiritualists she speaks with, and that she forms an intention to expose the whole scam in a series of articles for the "musical and dramatic papers" to which she has promised American material. Surely -- as she in effect did claim later in her life -- EHB has by 1856-7 already seen a more obscured and profound wisdom tradition in action: one in which apparent blasphemy, dissociating strangeness and fetishistic secrecy are essential elements. Is Emma's positioning in the Autobiography just that -- rhetorical construction? Or are the various versions of the Orphic Circle narrative a mask -- a formation -- designed to shield from inspection a very different set of (almost certainly traumatic) events experienced by a young (12-19 year old) Emma Floyd?

We have to assume, I think, that there is something substantial to the Orphic Circle narratives, and we have to further assume that the narratives do point to a real circle of occult practitioners (until we exhaust the plausibility of the suspect list), since Emma named some of that circle -- Bulwer-Lytton, Philip Henry Earl of Stanhope and Richard Morrison -- albeit in a medium not likely to attract much attention from non-specialist audiences.

But we also have to keep in view a plain fact: Emma was psychologically complex, and deeply wounded by something, in her past -- something that was reflected (as in a skrying mirror) in her concern for outcast women.