The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

About the book

Brownson's narrator describes an intellectual journey through scientific study, fashionable systems of thought, and encounters with mesmerism and purported supernatural phenomena. The personal narrative supplies a framework for an extended religious argument about how such experiences should be understood. In his preface, Brownson explicitly distinguishes the invented narrative machinery from claims he regards as factual, while acknowledging substantial use of a French work on spirit manifestations. The book's aim is polemical: it connects spiritualism with social and political doctrines the author opposes and urges a return to Christian faith. Readers should approach its purported explanations as Brownson's historical religious position. Its interest lies in the collision between experimental curiosity, fear of deception, and competing claims to authority in nineteenth-century intellectual life.

• Spiritualism and belief
• Religious authority
• Science and polemic

Why read it

The unusual mixture of fictional life story and sustained argument reveals how Brownson tries to turn personal experience into religious persuasion.

English Little, Brown and Company and Charles Dolman edition of 1854; a fictional autobiographical framework