DOYLE ARTHUR CONAN Autograph Letter Signed A Conan Doyle to

Sale 2316 - Lot 224

Price Realized: $ 2,280

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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

"ALL SPIRITUALISTS ARE FINE UNSELFISH PEOPLE" DOYLE, ARTHUR CONAN. Autograph Letter Signed, "A Conan Doyle," to Monica Williams, requesting her assistance with research on spiritualism in advance of journalist Hannen Swaffer's lecture on contact with the spirit of Lord Northcliffe. 2 pages, 8vo, written on the recto and verso of a single sheet; light toning overall, faint bleed-through, horizontal fold. "Chalet Berma," 7 January [1925]

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"I think it would be well for you to come up to town for a day on the 20th and go to the Queens Hall meeting at 8. It should be important. Swaffer lays before London the evidence as to the survival of Lord Northcliffe. You have to be in the swim now. I enclose a pound to cover expenses. You might call on David Gow at 5 Queen Square (he is the Editor of 'Light') and also see at the same address Mr. Phillimore, who acts as Secretary of the London Spiritual alliance. They sell psychic books . . . . Miss Estelle Stead of 5 Smith Square Westminster . . . runs the Stead Bureau which has a fine psychic library . . . . And you will find that all Spiritualists are fine unselfish people. . . . I have ordered 1000 bill heads and envelopes . . . ."
Doyle was an avid spiritualist beginning in his early twenties. After delivering a lecture in 1917 on the subject, Doyle became the de facto leader of the U.S. Spiritualist movement. On January 20, 1925, two weeks after Doyle wrote the present letter, Mr. Hannen Swaffer, a journalist and Spiritualist advocate, delivered a lecture based on his book, Northcliffe's Return, an examination of recent contact with the sprit of Alfred Harsmworth, Lord Northcliffe, the influential newspaper publisher who had died in 1922.