The Land of Mist and Other Spiritualist Writings by Arthur Conan Doyle

Citation

Ferguson C (ed.) (2021) The Land of Mist and Other Spiritualist Writings by Arthur Conan Doyle, Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-the-edinburgh-edition-of-the-works-of-arthur-conan-doyle/

Abstract
This volume presents the first ever full edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s remarkable 1926 psychic novel The Land of Mist, reuniting its main text with the erotically charged, religiously provocative, and previously unpublished chapter ‘The Darker Side’ after over a century of separation, and anchoring its narrative within the contemporary heterodox writings of its (at the time of the work’s composition) openly and ardently spiritualist author. It includes an introduction, textual essay, critical apparatus, explanatory notes, and 31 illustrations by F.E. Hiley from the work’s original serialization in the Strand. It represents Conan Doyle’s most sustained and earnest fictional exploration of the spiritualist movement to which he dedicated the last years of his life. Here the author repurposes the famous protagonist of his popular Professor Challenger series for spiritualist ends, hoping that the bellicose scientist’s dramatic conversion to afterlife belief would inspire a similar effect among its readers.

Keywords
Arthur Conan Doyle; Gothic; Professor Challenger; Scottish Literature; Spiritualism and Theosophy; The Strand Magazine