Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge
2 total works
Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (1809-1892) was the wife of the mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan and mother of the celebrated ceramicist William De Morgan. In this book, published in 1863, De Morgan, writing as 'CD' - with a preface by her husband signed as 'AB' - acknowledges that alleged spirit manifestations have faced much criticism and scepticism, but argues that it was a little-understood phenomenon that merited further investigation. She spent a decade on this research, and focused on the role of the mediums, people who were believed to communicate with the spirit world. She was aided in this by the arrival of a medium who lived with the De Morgan family for six years. Her chapters also examine in depth the process of dying and ideas about the afterlife. A first-hand account of the nineteenth-century spiritualist world, this book provides a fascinating glimpse into Britain's changing religious landscape.
Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (1809-1892) was the wife of the mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan and mother of ceramicist William De Morgan. In Threescore Years and Ten, completed in 1887, edited by her daughter Mary, and published in 1895, De Morgan recounts her formative early years and the influence of her father, the social reformer William Frend. She followed in his footsteps and fought for many causes, including higher education for women and prison reform. She was also an early animal rights activist and campaigned against vivisection. Throughout her life, De Morgan encountered some of the leading writers and thinkers of the time - she was introduced to William Blake when she was a child and many years later found herself the neighbour of Thomas Carlyle. De Morgan's reflections on her life offer an insight into the intellectual world of a Victorian social reformer.