Faces of the Living Dead: Remembrance Day Messages and Photographs. A Straightforward Statement by Estelle W. Stead. With Supplement Showing Recognised “Extras” Obtained Through the Mediumship of Mrs. Deane
Manchester, UK: 1925. Very Good. Item #48290
Manchester, UK: "The Two Worlds" Publishing Co. Ltd., 1925. First Edition. Small octavo (18cm); publisher's tan printed card wrappers; 87,[1]pp.; author portrait frontispiece and six leaves of halftone plates printed on rectos and versos bound in rear. Light wear and some faint red dampstaining to upper cover, shallow dog-earing to plates in rear, two leaves of plates separated but present. Good to Very Good overall.
Scarce defense of the medium and spirit photographer Ada Emma Deane, who had attracted suspicion after releasing her "Armistice Day" photographs taken with the assistance of Estelle W. Stead at a two-minute Armistice silence at the Cenotaph in London.
Perhaps Deane and Stead's most important proponent was Arthur Conan Doyle, a staunch believer in spirit and fairy photography, who published a letter in "The Daily Sketch" (reprinted here), arguing that "There are other considerations, such as Mrs. Deane's total want of technical ability to rig up so complex a photograph...Taking all these things together, I think that her complete innocence is manifest" (p. 48).
Provenance: Ownership rubberstamp of Harold Cummins, quite likely the developer of dermatoglyphics, the pseudoscientific study of fingerprints.
Quite rare, we find no copies in the trade as of May, 2026, and just five copies in the US in OCLC (Boston Medical Library, Harvard, U. Maryland, U. Michigan, and the NYPL).
Price: $500.00