#The magic circle museum london archive#

The collection also includes Dingwall’s correspondence with many major figures of psychical research in the 20th century including Mollie Goldney, Trevor Hall, Guy Lyon Playfair, James Randi, Geroge Zorab and organisations such as the BBC, the Magic Circle and Society for Psychical Research. The papers include his extensive and wide-ranging scrapbooks, records of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, prints and slides of psychic and anthropological photographs and Dingwall’s kit of essentials for investigations. Among these are the papers of psychical investigator and anthropologist Eric Dingwall.

#The magic circle museum london archive#

Since the arrival of The Harry Price Library, the Library has continued to acquire archive collections on related subjects. Much of the archive documents his work in psychical research with files on some of his most famous investigations such as spirit photography, Borley Rectory, the mediumships of the Schneider Brothers and Helen Duncan and Gef, the talking mongoose.įurther information on the Library collection can be found here and the Archive can be searched or browsed here. In addition to the Library collection, the Harry Price Archive includes his working papers and correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, scrapbooks, film shot by Price, artwork and objects. Thanks to a bequest from Price the collection continues to grow with new books and objects reflecting the wide-range of the subjects covered. Among the early books are two copies of a 1494 edition of Malleus Maleficarum and other early works on witchcraft and demonology, a 1572 English translation of Ludwig Lavater's De Spectris, Lemuribus et Magnis atque Insolitis Fragoribus on ghosts and spirits and rare pamphlets by Oliver Goldsmith on the Cock-Lane Ghost and by Jonathan Swift on charlatans. Price was also a collector of antiquarian material. The 19 th and early 20 th century are particularly well represented in the areas of spiritualism and psychical research.

Price collected in many areas and the collection is rich on magic, witchcraft, psychical research, parapsychology, prognostication, the occult, hauntings and the paranormal. The Harry Price Library collection includes over 13,000 books, pamphlets, cuttings, offprints and periodicals dating from the 15 th century onwards. The foundation collection of the Library’s holdings on The Paranormal, the Occult and the Magical was built by author, psychical researcher and book collector Harry Price over many years before he gave it to the University of London in the late 1930s for the purpose of encouraging research and investigation into the unexplained. These can be used to browse the collections on the shelves and via the catalogue. Books and journals can be searched for in the Library Catalogue and Archive collections in the Archive Catalogue.Ī guide to the Library’s classification scheme by classmark and subject can be found here. Books on this subject can be found in many parts of the Library’s collections including Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Art and Literary Studies as well as in our e-book collections. The Harry Price Library and archive collections are part of the Library’s Special Collections and can be requested for consultation in the Special Collections Reading Room on the 4 th floor. New works, antiquarian books and archival material continue to be added to the collections. The Modern Collections and e-book collections include recent and current scholarship on parapsychology, the paranormal, the occult, magic and witchcraft. The Archives contain several collections on psychical research and spiritualism including the research and correspondence of Eric John Dingwall and manuscripts related to séances and spiritualist circles. The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature has grown since then and includes over 13,0000 items on psychical research and parapsychology, the occult, spiritualism, the paranormal, the unexplained, phenomena, magic and witchcraft. The Library’s collections in parapsychology and the paranormal began with the deposit of psychical investigator and author Harry Price’s collection of books and papers in the late 1930s.