Art Magic

Marc Demarest’s long awaited annotated edition of Emma Hardinge Britten’s Art Magic is finally available. The publisher is Typhon Press, a specialty publishing house focused on scholarly editions of spiritualist and occult works, and the announcement for the book says:

First published in 1876, Art Magic is one of the founding documents of the Victorian occult revival. Published under mysterious circumstances, the book was controversial in its own day, and has intrigued and infuriated students of the occult for nearly 150 years. Regarded for years merely as a supplement to the more famous Ghost Land (1876), this new edition of Art Magic demonstrates clearly that Art Magic is actually the more important work: closely connected to the founding and early teachings of the Theosophical Society, to Helena Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled (1877), and to the teachings of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, as well as to the work of J. C. Street, R. Swinburne Clymer and other occult figures.


This definitive, corrected edition of the text fixes errors in the first edition text, and includes an in-depth bibliographical and historical introduction, as well as extensive annotations to the text by Marc Demarest, the curator of the Emma Hardinge Britten Archive.

Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899) was one of the most influential spiritualist and occult propagandists of the nineteenth century. Her work informs modern-day organizations as diverse as the international spiritualist movement, the Theosophical Society, esoteric Freemasonry, and the Church of Light.

Mr. Demarest’s notes will no doubt make this “forgotten classic” much more accessible than it has been. The 546 page paperback is now available from Amazon.