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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- ‘Ghosts Up To Date’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (January 1894)
- ‘Science and Demonology’, Illustrated London News (June 1894)
- ‘Science and “Miracles”’, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- Three Seeresses (1880–1900, 1424–1431)', Anglo-Saxon Review (September 1900)
- ‘Magic Mirrors and Crystal Gazing’, Monthly Review (December 1901)
- ‘Human Personality After Death’, Monthly Review (March 1903)
- ‘Presidential Address, Delivered on May 16th, 1911’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (August 1911)
- Letters to Oliver Lodge
- Letters to William James
- ‘Letter to E. B. Tylor on Home and the Brownings’
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
‘Letter to E. B. Tylor on Home and the Brownings’
from 6 - PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- ‘Ghosts Up To Date’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (January 1894)
- ‘Science and Demonology’, Illustrated London News (June 1894)
- ‘Science and “Miracles”’, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- Three Seeresses (1880–1900, 1424–1431)', Anglo-Saxon Review (September 1900)
- ‘Magic Mirrors and Crystal Gazing’, Monthly Review (December 1901)
- ‘Human Personality After Death’, Monthly Review (March 1903)
- ‘Presidential Address, Delivered on May 16th, 1911’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (August 1911)
- Letters to Oliver Lodge
- Letters to William James
- ‘Letter to E. B. Tylor on Home and the Brownings’
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
Summary
1, Marloes Road,
Kensington. W.
Nov 8 (1904)
Dear Tylor
Have you found your note of what Browning told you? He told Greenwood (1) that he caught hold above a table of Home's naked foot which Home was passing off as the ghost of a dead child of his R.B.'s and Mrs Browning.
They had no dead child and were only once at a séance with Home. Several other people were present, and a contemporary letter of Mrs Browning's give a favourable account of it, but protests against the notion of meeting dead people.
(2) Browning told F. Myers and another that he knew two people who had caught Home experimenting on a wall with phosphorous.
He told his son (3) that he had ‘exposed Home by catching hold of his foot under the table.’ What he told you (4) sounds like a variant of 2. As the only meet of Home with the Brownings, at a séance, was in June or July 1855, and as the contemporary letters of both Brownings exist, the date can be fixed. In thirty or forty years the poet's memory seems to have become mythopoeic, which is interesting. Of course the memories of Greenwood and of Pen Browning may have added their quota of myth, so your contemporary note would be valuable. There is contemporary record of the fake (as it seemed to the observers) by Home, in a moonless July night. H. is still alive and thinks the Pigat was good enough.
If a fake, it was childishly cheap and obvious. Home said that Thackeray was the most sceptical observer he ever met, but Thackeray could find out nothing.
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- Information
- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangAnthropology, Fairy Tale, Folklore, The Origins of Religion, Psychical Research, pp. 332 - 334Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015