My Experience, or Foot-Prints of a Presbyterian to Spiritualism.
Baltimore: n. p., 1860. First edition. 8vo, original purple cloth, gilt lettering, [i-ii], [5]-232 pages, as published. Spine sunned and bleached; some crimping and creasing to the front free endpaper; a very good copy. Item #19490
An extensive account of the author’s conversion to Spiritualist practice and beliefs (his orthodoxy is overturned after an experience in 1854 with table-tipping in Washington, D. C.), with extensive accounts here taken from the spirit realm and relayed through mediums from such figures as Humphry Davy, Benjamin Franklin, both Kane and Sir John Franklin, and several instances of verse from the departed Edgar Allan Poe. The genealogical details given in the text (included as bona fides for the mediums Smith has worked with) point to this Francis H. Smith (1797-1872) as the father of the namesake engineer, painter, and popular novelist Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). Pencil ownership signature dated 1876 on the front free endpaper.
Price: $150.00