“Glorious Madness”: Susanna Moodie and the Spiritualist Movement

Abstract

The essay is divided into three major sections. The middle contains three letters written by Susanna Moodie in Belleville in the late 1850s to Richard Bentley, her English publisher. These detail her growing interest in and resistance to the spiritualist movement, an interest which culminates in her active involvement, described in the final letter. Section I provides information about the movement’s origins and development as well as about Moodie’s reading and her acquaintance with the famous Kate Fox. Section III locates early signs of Moodie’s interest in matters spiritual in her English writing prior to 1832 and in certain parts of Roughing It in the Bush (1852).