Orestes Augustus Brownson ~5 hr read

A man recounts his descent into the world of mesmerism, spirit-rapping, and revolutionary intrigue, a strange autobiography that even its author cannot quite classify.

Orestes Brownson's 1854 novel is a curious blend of occult fantasy, satire, and philosophy. Provocative, unclassifiable, of its era. Read it for a fascinating oddity of American letters, a philosophical romance of spiritualism and its perils by a noted convert-intellectual, blending the era's séance craze with sharp religious and political reflection in a genuinely strange book.

In its time

Published in 1854, during the 1850s, fairy tale and moral fantasy for a mass reading public; the sensation novel stirs.

Reading it

~5 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).