Original OCR: no clean-up

6,365 ALTO XML files at page level

6,365 image files

METS metadata files at item level

1,272,774 lines and 11,577,467 words

Covers years 1869-1882


This dataset consists of a complete run of ‘The Spiritualist’, later ‘The Spiritualist Newspaper’, and a partial run of its short lived successor ‘Psyche’.

Published in London from 1869-1882, ‘The Spiritualist’ is a key title of the spiritualist movement, and significant in relation to the development of the movement in the UK. Unusually for this era it has a strong focus on women, due to their dominance in the movement.

Spiritualism started in New York in 1848 arriving in Britain in the 1850s. With no central structure or key texts journals played an important role in the movement. Edinburgh-born Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was among the supporters of spiritualism. Detractors included his friend Harry Houdini, who collected spiritualist publications including this title which is in the Harry Houdini Collection in the Library of Congress.

The Spiritualist

Rights information

No Known Copyright

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File contents: 1 plain text readme file; 8 ALTO XML files; 1 METS file; 8 image files.

File size: 2.22 MB compressed (5.76 MB uncompressed)

All the data

File contents: 1 plain text readme file; 1 CSV inventory file; 6,365 ALTO XML files; 416 METS files; 6,365 image files.

File size: 1.5 GB compressed (2.9 GB uncompressed)

Caution: large dataset

Just the text

File contents: 1 plain text readme file; 1 CSV inventory file; 416 plain text files.

File size: 26.5 MB compressed (68.28 MB uncompressed)


Cite the data

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34812/3b0g-3j88

Dataset creator: National Library of Scotland

Dataset publisher: National Library of Scotland

Publication year: 2019

Suggested citation: National Library of Scotland. The Spiritualist. National Library of Scotland, 2019. https://doi.org/10.34812/3b0g-3j88