Long ignored by scholarship, Lister was a writer, folklore collector, and occultist who served as an inspiration and adviser to the American man of letters Charles Godfrey Leland. Throughout her life, Lister, like her friend Lady Walburga Paget and others, often had strange, visionary experiences.
“Bellosguardo…it is a haunted, legendary spot; fate and witches sweep round its walls by night, while the cry of the civetta makes music for their aërial dance…” -Charles Godfrey Leland Nineteenth-century Florence was haunted, and its haunters–whether of blood or spirit–were the stuff of legend. In the 1850s and 60s, Baron Kirkup garnered a reputation…
“My aim is to move beyond the perception that Lithuanian paganism is a matter of interest only to Lithuanians, and to show that this extraordinary pagan faith matters to the religious history of Europe as a whole.” – Dr Francis Young Every age has had its relic-hunters, those who, propelled forward into untracked territory by…
“Praetorius’s world and his work were constructed of wonderment at the magical universe and of the speculations of the new science.” -from Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time (2006) by Gerhild Scholz Williams Among Germany’s many legendary sites, the Brocken (formerly known as the Blocksberg) is…
“So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything…meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times.” -from Memoirs, Vol. I, by Charles Godfrey Leland (1894) Wild as it may seem, Charles Godfrey Leland did not begin his career as a model student. His Princeton years—for the most part—were…
“You will remember that Albertus Magnus…adds emphatically, that the process will instruct and avail only to the few— that a man must be born a magician!” -from The Haunters and the Haunted by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1859). In 1870, Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton hosted a quirky American man of letters named Charles Godfrey Leland at his manor house in Knebworth, Hertfordshire. The two thinkers were…