Letter to Harry Price (12 february 1926)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

This letter was written by Arthur Conan Doyle on 12 february 1926 to Harry Price about spiritualism, his essay The History of Spiritualism and The Land of Mist.


Letter

Windlesham
12th February, 1926.

Dear Price,

I send you these three photos with curious psychic markings and something like the bust of a lady over Miss Stead's head. There can be no question of the genuine character of the result. The medium was not well, and the very word 'test' seems to worry them, otherwise she might have done better. This is my fifth sitting with her of which only one other — the first, four years ago — was on strange plates. On that occasion I got a sort of rain effect, which seems now to have turned to snow.

My History should be out in the third week of May. Doran Co. publish in U.S.A., Cassells here. I begin with Swedenborg, and trace down through all the line of A. J. Davis, Edward Irving, the Shakers, the Foxes, the Davenports, Home, Slade and the rest down to our day. So far as I know nothing of the sort has been done by anyone who has an intimate personal experience of the movement from within. I have a chapter on the mediums with whom I have personally sat. I also treat the religious implications, which indeed is the only side which really interests me.

My novel 'The Land of Mist' will cover the whole present day state of the movement. That comes out in March, Hutchinsons handling it.

With best regards,

A. Conan Doyle