{"product_id":"myers-f-w-h-human-personality-and-its-survival-of-bodily-death","title":"MYERS, F.W.H. Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMYERS, F.W.H.\u003c\/strong\u003e Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Longmans, Green and Co.\u003c\/i\u003e 1903.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Two volumes. Original blue cloth with gilt lettering to spines; pp. xlvi, 700; xx, 660, 40 (publisher's catalogue); a little foxing to the first few leaves of volume 1, very good.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of Myers's work on the unconscious mind, presentation copy with ALS from the author's wife to Baron Swinfen.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) was one of the pre-eminent figures in the late Victorian boom in psychic studies. A founder of the Society of Psychical Research, he made his reputation  with the 1888 book \u003ci\u003ePhantasms of the Living\u003c\/i\u003e, written with Edmund Gurney, which documented 701 sightings of apparitions and attempted to forge a statistical proof of telepathy. He followed it up with a collection of essays \u003ci\u003eScience and a Future Life\u003c\/i\u003e (1893), in which he made it clear that his was not a religious quest but a scientific enquiry. These books were particularly influential on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that ardent spiritualist, who participated in seances with Myers as well as Henry Sidgwick and Alfred Russel Wallace, and wrote that \"in the great work of Frederic Myers […] psychic science will find its firmest root\" (introduction to Arthur J. Hill, \u003ci\u003eSpiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine\u003c\/i\u003e, [1913]).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most important idea in the present work, which was compiled from Myers's papers after his death, is the \"subliminal self\", a deep region of the subconscious mind that harbours innate human abilities in telepathy and clairvoyance. The supraliminal, or everyday, consciousness represents a mere fraction of our whole self and psychic potential for good and ill. Fellow parapsychological researchers including William James were highly impressed and the book received a second lease of life when it was republished in 1961 with an introduction by Aldous Huxley who described it as \"an amazingly rich, profound and stimulating book.\" Mainstream psychology, however, has not accepted his findings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: title page of volume 1 inscribed \"Lord Swinfen, from Mrs. Frederic W.H. Myers, 1932\", with loose ALS (17 x 12 cm) on headed notepaper of 12 Cleveland Row, dated 7th October 1932, written in ink on one side, folded into envelope addressed to Lord Swinfen. The letter, addressed to \"My dear Carol\" and signed off by \"Eveleen Myers\"  briefly refers to another copy of the book that she intended to give him before discussing friends and Eveleen's struggles with influenza. The association is interesting for the picture it paints of F.W.H. Myers's connections in high society, even after death. Eveleen was the sister of the artist Dorothy Tennant. She posed for the Pre-Raphaelite painters Watts and Millais and was a self-taught society photographer who gave up her art for her husband on their marriage in 1880.  Charles \"Carol\" Eady, the second Baron Swinfen, was a wealthy young peer. In 1937 he married Mary Farmar, who was to become better known in later life as the novelist Mary Wesley.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125414\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":63813870813561,"sku":"2125414","price":750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125414.jpg?v=1783345922","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/myers-f-w-h-human-personality-and-its-survival-of-bodily-death","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}