Authors: Mitch Horowitz
Any study of Emma Curtis Hopkins must begin, as mine did, with J. Gordon Melton’s seminal article, “New Thought’s Hidden History: Emma Curtis Hopkins, Forgotten Founder,”
JSSMR
, Spring 1995. (For alternate viewpoints see “Quimby as Founder of New Thought” by C. Alan Anderson,
JSSMR
, Spring 1997, Arthur Vergara’s “New Thought’s Accidental Acquisition,”
Creative Mind
, June 2011, and “New Thought’s Unfounded Foundation,”
Creative Mind
, July 2011.) Also important are Satter (1998); Gill (1998); Braden (1963, 1987); Materra (1997); Peel (1971); Gottschalk (1973); and
Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought
by Gail M. Harley (Syracuse University Press, 2002). Harley is particularly strong on Hopkins’s final years. On the social atmosphere of Hopkins’s career see “Christian Science and the Nineteenth Century Women’s Movement” by Gage William Chapel,
JSSMR
, Spring 2000.
Hopkins’s report of a “late serious illness” is from a letter of December 12, 1883, quoted from Harley (2002). Hopkins’s letter of January 14, 1884, is from Peel (1971). Hopkins’s letters of August 16, 1884, and
her undated letter (“I received a peremptory message”) are from Harley (2002). Her letter of November 4, 1885, is from Peel (1971). Gottschalk (1973) called my attention to Hopkins’s article “God’s Omnipresence,” which appeared in
The Journal of Christian Science
, April 1884.
Materra is quoted from his 1997 dissertation,
Women in Early New Thought
. The numbers of female Christian Science practitioners are from
Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism
by Stephen Gottschalk (Indiana University Press, 2006, 2011).
Hopkins’s attacks on A. J. Swarts are reported in Peel (1971), Braden (1963, 1987), and Harley (2002). Hopkins and Swarts are announced as joint editors of
Mental Science Magazine and Mind Cure Journal
in the March 18, 1886, issue of
The Index: A Weekly Paper
, a progressive journal connected with the Unitarian-Universalist movement.
For information on Hopkins’s husband and son I drew on Harley (2002), New Hampshire Death and Burial Records, and the 1906 Manchester (NH) City Directory.
On Hopkins’s spiritual outlook and her relationship with Mary H. Plunkett I benefited from Gill (1998), Harley (2002), Satter (1999), Peel (1971), and Gottschalk (1973). Hopkins is quoted from her
Class Lessons 1888
compiled and edited by Elizabeth C. Bogart (DeVorss, 1977). Hopkins’s final letter to Eddy on Christmas of 1886 is from Peel (1971).
I am indebted to Charles Braden’s
Christian Science Today: Power, Policy, Practice
(Southern Methodist University Press, 1958) for directing me to Eddy’s rule-tightening after Hopkins’s departure. Eddy is quoted from there and from the April 1888
Christian Science Journal
.
The testimonial of Hopkins’s student (“her instruction not only gives understanding”) appears in Braden (1963, 1987), who is quoting an unsigned 1889 article in the Fillmores’ first journal,
Modern Thought
; the writer may be Charles Fillmore. The other student tribute (“her brilliance of mind and spirit”) appeared in
Unity
in 1925 and is quoted from the foreword to a reissue of Hopkins’s
Scientific Christian Mental Practice
(1888), as published in 1958 by the High Watch Fellowship, an organization founded by Hopkins’s sister, Estelle Carpenter. In 1940 High
Watch Farm became an addiction-recovery retreat center based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, which it remains today.
Margery Fox is quoted from Materra (1997). Chapel is quoted from “Christian Science and the Nineteenth Century Women’s Movement” (JSSMR, Spring 2000). Also very helpful on nineteenth-century medicine and women is Ann Braude’s groundbreaking study,
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
(Indiana University Press, 1989, 2001), from which Braude is quoted. The quotations from Hopkins’s seminary graduation appeared in Melton’s article “New Thought’s Hidden History” (1995). Melton is quoted on the numbers of Hopkins’s female students from
Perspectives on the New Age
edited by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (State University of New York Press, 1992).
Emerson published his essay “Success” in 1870 in his collection
Society and Solitude
. The essay actually had its earliest roots in an address called “The Spirit of the Times,” which Emerson began delivering in the late 1840s. He revised it in the early 1850s into a talk called “The Law of Success”; by the end of the decade, Emerson settled on the simple title “Success.”
I am grateful to historian Keith McNeil for providing me with a very rare copy of William Henry Holcombe’s pamphlet,
Condensed Thoughts About Christian Science
(Purdy Publishing, 1887).
The Hartford New Thought Convention is referenced in Judah (1967) and Braden (1963, 1987) and is covered in the April 1899 issue of
Mind
magazine. The Boston convention is noted in the aforementioned books and in Dresser (1919). The 1899 Boston proceedings were published by the International Metaphysical League, with the asterisk and note next to Charles Fillmore’s name. The relationship between Fillmore and the International New Thought Alliance, and Fillmore’s writing on the matter, are noted in
The Household of Faith: The Story of Unity
by James Dillet Freeman (Unity School of Christianity, 1951) and
The Unity Movement: Its Evolution and Spiritual Teachings
by Neal Vahle (Templeton Foundation Press, 2002).
Hopkins’s 1919 correspondence of September 16 and November 20 was addressed to New York socialite and arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan;
it is quoted from Harley (2002). Ella Wheeler Wilcox is quoted from her book
The Heart of the New Thought
(Psychic Research Company, 1902).
Court trials involving Christian Science treatments began to uptick in 1888. A judicious consideration of this period is found in Charles Braden’s
Christian Science Today
(1958).
William James’s quote about “fanatics and one-sided geniuses” is from
William James: In the Maelstrom of the American Modernism
by Robert D. Richardson (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). James’s statement about an “impediment in the minds of people” is from
Genuine Reality: A Life of William James
by Linda Simon (University of Chicago Press, 1998). His letter about “fondness or non-fondness for mind-curers” is from
The Works of William James: Essays, Comments, and Reviews
edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Harvard University Press, 1987). James’s letters to the
Boston Evening Transcript
of 1894 and his legislative address of 1898 appear in
The Works of William James
(1987). The passage deriding James’s support for “quackery” originally ran in the
Philadelphia Medical Journal
and was reprinted in the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
of March 17, 1898. On the events before the committee, I benefited from the following:
William James: His Life and Thought
by Gerald E. Myers (Yale University Press, 1987); “ ‘The Facts Are Patent and Startling’: WJ and Mental Healing,” parts 1 and 2, by John T. Matteson,
Streams of William James
, Spring and Summer 2002;
Pox: An American History
by Michael Willrich (Penguin Press, 2011); and coverage in the
Boston Globe
of March 3, 1898, which includes an illustration of crowds gathered outside the packed committee room.
On the proliferation of licensing laws in the 1890s, I benefited from
American Medicine in Transition, 1840–1910
by John S. Haller Jr. (University of Illinois Press, 1981). Sources on the improvement of medical care include “Richard Cabot: Medical Reformer During the Progressive Era” by T. Andrew Dodds,
Annals of Internal Medicine
, September 1, 1993;
The Social
Transformation of American Medicine
by Paul Starr (Basic Books, 1984); and
Medical Licensing in America, 1650–1965
by Richard Harrison Shryock (Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), from which I drew upon the survey of Tennessee doctors.
Charles Thomas Hallinan is quoted from “My ‘New-Thought’ Boyhood,”
The Living Age
, March 5, 1921.
On the life of Frances Lord, I benefited from Kathi Kern’s study
Mrs. Stanton’s Bible
(Cornell University Press, 2001), which fills in several historical gaps and thoughtfully analyzes the intermingling of the suffragist and New Thought movements. I also benefited from an article on Lord in
The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928
by Elizabeth Crawford (University College of London Press, 1999). Also helpful were Satter (1999) and Gail M. Harley’s article on Emma Curtis Hopkins in
Women Building Chicago, 1790–1990: A Biographical Dictionary
edited by Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Indiana University Press, 2001). Stanton is quoted from Kern (2001) and from Stanton’s biography,
Eighty Years and More, 1815–1897: Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(European Publishing Company, 1898). On the life of Lord, I also benefited from Deirdre Mitchell’s paper, “New Thinking, New Thought, New Age: The Theology and Influence of Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925),”
Counterpoints: The Flinders University Online Journal of Interdisciplinary Conference Papers
(July 2002).
Prentice Mulford originally published his series of essays as “The White Cross Library”; he wrote them from 1886 until his death in 1891. Publisher F. J. Needham collected the essays as
Your Forces, And How to Use Them
, issued in six volumes from 1890 to 1892 (the last volume appeared posthumously).
Your Forces, And How to Use Them
comprises 74 essays; in later editions the publisher removed from volume 3 a verse work, “Voice of the Mountain,” and added to each of the volumes a short prefatory work, “God” (which appears to have been written by Mulford but it is unclear). Mulford’s initial use of the phrase “thoughts are things” is from his 1886 essay “You Travel When You Sleep,” which opens volume 1 of
Your Forces
.
On the life of Prentice Mulford, I benefited from the essay “About
Prentice Mulford,” which appeared in the last volume of
Your Forces
; it combined Mulford’s autobiographical reflections with the biographical notes of others. Of further help was “Passing of Prentice Mulford” by Charles Warren Stoddard,
National Magazine
, September 1906, from which Mulford’s journal passages are quoted. Also helpful was the same author’s article “Prentice Mulford, the New Gospeler,” from the
National Magazine
of April 1905, which is quoted regarding Mulford’s Thoreau-like traits. For Mulford’s own recollection of the period I quote from his autobiographical essay in
Your Forces
. On Mulford’s New Jersey experiences, I quote from his memoir
The Swamp Angel
(F. J. Needham, 1888), which Mulford wrote as his equivalent of
Walden
. Mulford’s quotes on Spiritualism are from “The Invisible in Our Midst,” a series of sketches for
The Golden Era
, written from December 1869 to March 1870; they are reprinted in the rare
Prentice Mulford’s California Sketches
, edited and with an introduction by Franklin Walker (Book Club of California, 1935). On Mulford’s interest in Spiritualism I greatly benefited from Walker’s
San Francisco’s Literary Frontier
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1939). I am grateful for Enoch Anderson’s foreword to a reissue of Mulford’s 1889
Life by Land and Sea
(Santa Ana River Press, 2004), a memoir of his whaling and mining years; Anderson provides an excellent overview of Mulford’s San Francisco days and early life. Also helpful is a section on Mulford in
The American Idea of Success
by Richard M. Huber (Pushcart Press, 1971, 1987). William James’s letter on Mulford is from Myers (1987). The
New York Times
reported Mulford’s death in “It Was Prentice Mulford: Sheepshead Bay’s Mystery Was Solved Yesterday,” June 1, 1891.
Helen Wilmans recounted her personal story in her books,
A Search for Freedom
(Freedom Publishing Company, 1898) and
The Conquest of Poverty
(International Scientific Association, 1899); she is quoted from these sources. On Wilmans’s life I benefited from the work of Satter (1999) and Materra (1997); I quote Wilmans’s letter of August 31, 1907, from the latter’s work. Other sources include coverage of the Wilmans court cases in Dresser (1919); in the articles “A Blow to Mental Science: Post Office Will Hold All Mail of a Florida Healer, Under the Fraud Order,”
New York Times
, October 6, 1901, and “Helen Wilmans, the Conqueror,” by Frederic W. Burry,
The Balance
, January 1908; and in Wilmans’s personal statement of defense, “My Soul’s Belief,”
The Balance
, May 1907.
Key sources on James Allen are “James Allen: A Memoir” by Lily L. Allen,
The Epoch
, February–March 1912 (this was the magazine that the Allens originally published as
The Light of Reason
); and
James Allen & Lily L. Allen: An Illustrated Biography
, by John Woodcock (Sun Publishing, 2007), a valuable codex to Allen’s life. William Allen (“I’ll make a scholar out of you”) is quoted from
The Epoch
(1912). Allen’s quote “The man who says, ‘My religion is true’ ” is from his posthumous 1912 work
Light on Life’s Difficulties
. Lily Allen’s statement “He never wrote
theories
” is from her introduction to Allen’s posthumous 1913 work,
Foundation Stones to Happiness and Success
. Allen’s statement “thoroughness is genius” is from his 1904
Byways of Blessedness
. The quote from the
Ilfracombe Chronicle
obituary is from Woodcock (2007). Dale Carnegie is quoted from
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
(Simon & Schuster, 1944). Bob Smith’s interest in
As a Man Thinketh
is noted in
Dr. Bob and His Library
by Dick B. (Paradise Research Publications, 1992, 1994, 1998). For Marcus Garvey’s interest in New Thought see my
Occult America
(2009). Michael Jackson’s comment is from “Radnor Family Had Inside Look at Michael Jackson” by Patti Mengers,
Delaware County Daily Times
(PA), June 28, 2009. Curtis Martin’s reference to Allen appeared in “Hobbled Martin Practices and Is Probable for Patriots,” by Gerald Eskenazi,
New York Times
, September 14, 2002. Stedman Graham is quoted from “Stedman Graham Tells How to Achieve Personal Freedom” by Shannon Barbour,
New Pittsburgh Courier
, June 12, 1999.