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Yost, Caspar S. Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916. First edition, third printing. Octavo, pp. [i-ii] [i-ii] iii-iv [v-vi] [1] 2-285 [286: blank] 287-290: index [291-292: blank] [293-296: publisher's ads]. Original black pictorial cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold. Early ink ownership signature on front free endpaper. A fine bright copy in very good dust-jacket with just a touch of darkening and scuffing to spine panel, an impressive copy, with a strikingly attractive binding, uncommon in this condition. The jacket's front panel reprints reviewer blurbs, the spine panel shows the price of $1.40 and "3d printing," while the inner front flap carries blurbs for the first U.S. editions of Robert Frosts first two poetry collections (A Boy's Will and North of Boston), then already in later printings. The book itself contains no statement of its printing status, which was in accordance with Holt's haphazard methods of the time. Thus the book offers no evidence that it is -- or isn't -- a third printing. Were extra copies of the book left over from its first press run, with new jackets printed up to publicize its popularity? Maybe, but there's no evidence for it, and it would seem just as likely that the book, as well as the jacket, were newly printed to satisfy demand. #3448. $100. Bleiler (1948), p. 293. The "Patience Worth" phenomenon began in 1913 with some Ouija board experiments in St. Louis. Mrs. John H. Curran became the official amanuensis for the spirit, who never said exactly where or when she lived, though her speech patterns suggest a modernized 17th-century. Smith (American Fiction, 1901-1925) cites two works by Worth (The Sorry Tale, 1917, a Biblical romance weighing in at 644 pages; and Hope Trueblood, 1918; both of these titles credit Yost (an experienced St. Louis newspaperman) as the editor; Smith did not list the present title by Yost, evidently considering it as a historical rather than a literary document). The popularity of Patience Worth continued for at least another decade, with her effusions taking the form of poetry, drama and fiction. The present title by Yost has been in print since 2012 from White Crow Books, which specializes in fiction and nonfiction about the religious, occult and paranormal. In addition to those writings ascribed to Worth, the phenomenon generated an intermittent but continuing stream of writings about her by students of the occult. The "Patience Worth" entry in The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (1991, p. 1265) lists six titles for recommended reading in addition to those mentioned in the main body of the entry, which includes a study as recent as 1977. The encyclopedia's evaluation of Worth's "literary merit" as "remarkable" is perhaps best understood in light of its fanciful description of her writing style as "late Medieval English." "Purportedly true narrative of psychic communications via Ouija board from the title character, a loquacious spirit. The prose and poetry thus received is astonishingly bad, written in fluent fustian. Should have been left on the other side." - Robert Knowlton. The whole phenomenon, intrinsically enigmatic, could give rise to yet another speculation: did "Casper Yost" somehow return to inspire the creation (in 1945) of Casper the Friendly Ghost?
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