Spiritualism in William Stainton Moses's Ghost Club and Light: Blurring Public and Private Spaces

Arthur Conan Doyle, the best known late-Victorian literary author to engage Spiritualism, said of William Stainton Moses: "There is no writer who has left his mark upon the religious side of Spiritualism so strongly"; he is one of four "great mediums" of the period. In recent decades, academic scholarship has focused more on Spiritualism as culturally significant because it reveals Victorian concerns about the decline of religion, the rise of science, and individuals' agency within this changing world. This article examines how Stainton Moses introduced discussion about key Spiritualist concepts and then used this discussion directly in the journal Light. As Stainton Moses articulated Spiritualist principles, he blurred boundaries between public and private within these spaces in order to create distinct space for Spiritualism among other late-Victorian movements and build a collection of oral testimony that could serve as a legitimate record of Spiritualist phenomena.