Facts Mesmerism, First Edition (6 results)

Stapled Wraps. Condition: Very Good. Illustrated (illustrator). First Edition. 26 pages. No date, circa 1930.

Hardcover. Condition: Poor. 1st Edition. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans. 1840, FIRST EDITION. 2 plates, errata on verso of final leaf, 16pp cata. (April 1840). Orig. black cloth, blocked in blind, spine lettered in faded gilt; With an Introductory Epistle, written from 'Innspruck', Nov. 25, 1839, and a 33-page supplement consisting of personal testimonies of mesmeric sensation. Dickens shared Townshend's interest in Mesmerism, and the two became acquainted in the 1840s.this scarce fiest edition is generally in Poor condition with badly rubbed boards and corners, repaired and only partial title page, 4 bore holes from insects which don't affect the text and a crayon coloured plate. Pages are tanned but all remains well bound and readable.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Pages are lightly used, slightly age tanned. Staining on endpapers and title page. Rebound with burgundy cloth cover. Binding and cover are excellent. Embossed previous owner stamp on title page. Approximately 5" X 7 1/2". 539 pages.

Cloth. Condition: Very Good. First American Edition. First American Edition. x, [2], [1]-539 pages. 8vo. Publisher's dark brown cloth with gilt spine lettering and blindstamped decorations on the front and rear panels. A bright copy with some fraying at the top of the spine panel and light foxing throughout. With the ownership signature of Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch (son of the better known mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch) on the title page and dated 1842. Cloth. Nathaniel I. Bowditch was Vice President of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1856-1862. Townshend was a skeptic, later a supporter of animal magnetism. The first edition was London, 1840, with the title "Facts in Mesmerism, With Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry Into it" and went through a number of editions. Robert H. Collyer has added an appendix "Report of the Boston Committee on Animal Magnetism, as Exhibited by Dr. Robert H. Collyer" to this edition ("First American Edition" as stated on the title page) There was also a Harper and Brothers edition in 1841 with a page count of 388 pages. Nicely represented in institutional collections but less commonly found in the trade.

8vo. xii, 575, [1], [16] ads. 2 lithographic plates by Madeley (facing pages 206, 246), errata. Original publisher's blind-stamped green cloth, gilt title; expertly rebacked with original spine laid-on, new endleaves. A few pencil marks. Near fine. First Edition. Grimes calls this work "one of the most widely read and influential of mesmerism texts . . . [the author] refers to mesmerism as an 'imponderable agent' which 'influences' the patient. An 'influence' originally meant 'the supposed flowing or streaming from the stars or heavens of an ethereal fluid acting upon the destiny and character of men' and also an 'occult force.' Townshend used the term to describe how a mesmerist could command this mysterious emission in order to regulate the actions of his subject." â" Grimes. / Edgar Allan Poe wrote a review of this authors' book on mesmerism. In the Broadway Journal, April 5, 1845, Poe called Chauncey Hare Townshend's book Facts in Mesmerism (London, 1840) "one of the most truly profound and philosophical works of the day â" a work to be valued properly only in a day to come." â" see: Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poetry and Tales, Library of America, 1996, p. 412. / "Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798â"1868), poet and collector, was a well-connected friend of Robert Southey and Charles Dickens. He became fascinated with Mesmerism while in Germany and went on to popularize it in England. This book, first published in 1840, was his passionate defense of Mesmerism. Developed in the late eighteenth century by Franz Mesmer, Mesmerism was a kind of hypnosis based on the theory of animal magnetism. With its spiritual associations and uncanny effects, it was an extremely controversial topic in the nineteenth century and its practitioners were widely considered fraudsters. Townshend describes in detail the mental states Mesmerism induces, which he identifies as similar to a state of sleepwalking. Perhaps most fascinating are the eye-witness accounts describing experiments carried out by Townshend on the continent, in which he hypnotized his subjects into feeling his own sensations and knowing things they could not know." â" Cambridge University Press. REFERENCES: Adam Crabtree; Robert H Wozniak, Animal magnetism, early hypnotism, and psychical research, 1766-1925: an annotated bibliography, 433. See: Hilary Grimes, The Late Victorian Gothic: Mental Science, the Uncanny and Scenes of Writing, Ashgate, 2011, page 66.

Hardcover. 1st. With an appendix containing the report of the Boston Committee on Animal Magnetism. Bound in publisher's original brown cloth with spine stamped in gilt. A nice tight and bright copy with only minimal rubbing to extremities. minor foxing to fore edge and easily removable pencil notes throughout. An important book.