1874 Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly — Victoria Woodhull, St. Paul's, Spirit — Nov 14
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1874 Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly — Victoria Woodhull, St. Paul's, Spirit — Nov 14
📜 ABOUT THIS PIECE OF HISTORY 📜
Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, November 14, 1874 — and this issue opens in the most unexpected place: above the earth, in a state of spiritual suspension, gazing down at the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London as the protagonist of the paper's great serial communes with the higher worlds above him. In no other American newspaper of 1874 would you find a front page like this one — part philosophy, part vision, part political manifesto, written with the confidence of a movement that believed it was remaking civilization from the ground up. This is Victoria Woodhull's paper at its most extraordinary.
📖 FRONT PAGE SERIAL — "BY AND BY" — BOOK III, CHAPTER II — ABOVE ST. PAUL'S, BETWEEN WORLDS
The entire front page is given over to Chapter II of Edward Maitland's By and By: An Historical Romance of the Future — one of the most philosophically ambitious installments of the entire serial. Crise, floating in the upper air, reflects on the spiritual inheritance of England, France, and Italy — on beauty and aspiration, on the Church as an imperfect vessel for genuine divinity, on what it means to consecrate one's talents to God rather than to name-seeking. The passage meditating on St. Paul's Cathedral — its dome cutting the London skyline, its body lying beneath him as he passes overhead — is one of the serial's great set pieces. Maitland writes about the Supreme, the Infinite, the individual soul as a flower of the divine — language that was entirely at home in the Woodhull-Claflin theological universe, where free love, labor reform, and spiritual liberation were all expressions of the same underlying truth.
👻 INTERIOR — "SUNDAY MEDIC" & SPIRITUALIST CONTENT
Interior pages carry spiritualist content in the paper's characteristic mode — the movement that Victoria Woodhull had championed since childhood, when she first claimed to commune with spirits, and which ran as a living current through every issue of the paper alongside its political radicalism.
⚙️ INTERIOR — SOCIALISTIC & LABOR REFORM SECTIONS
The paper's labor and socialist content is fully present — the ongoing week-by-week elaboration of the program that had made Woodhull & Claflin's the most radical and consequential periodical in America.
📋 INTERIOR — "WHAT THE LABOR WANTS" & REFORM DEBATE
Interior pages include pointed content on the demands of labor — wages, hours, dignity, the right of working people to the fruits of their own work. This was the paper that had published Marx. It never stopped making the argument.
✉️ BUSINESS EDITORIALS & CORRESPONDENCE
The final pages carry Business Editorials and reader correspondence — the circulatory system of a national movement conducted through the mail, with Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly at its center.
🔍 CONDITION & TRANSPARENCY 🔍
Completeness: As is typical and expected for copies that passed through institutional or personal bindings, the first and last leaves — the outer advertisement pages — are absent. All editorial content is present and intact.
Authenticity: Guaranteed original printing from November 14, 1874 — not a reproduction.
Condition Report: Presents well overall for a 151-year-old newspaper with natural age-toning throughout. Some scattered foxing spots visible on interior pages, consistent with the age of the newsprint and entirely typical for paper of this era. Text is legible throughout. I have photographed every spread — please review all images carefully and don't hesitate to ask for additional close-ups before purchasing.
📦 SHIPPING & PRESERVATION 📦
Housed in an acid-free archival folder to protect the 151-year-old newsprint
Flat-shipped with heavy-duty reinforcement to ensure safe arrival
Fully tracked for your peace of mind
In 1874 a woman was floating above St. Paul's in prose, fighting for the vote in the streets, and publishing Marx in her newspaper. What century was she living in? The next one.
🏷️ TAGS
1874 Woodhull Claflin Weekly, Victoria Woodhull Newspaper, Woodhull Claflin November 1874, Edward Maitland By and By, St Pauls Cathedral Utopian Fiction, Victorian Spiritualism, Free Love Movement, 19th Century Women's Rights, Gilded Age Radicalism, Early American Socialism, Feminist Radical Press, Antique Newspaper 1874, Victorian Utopian Serial, Labor Reform 1874, Woodhull Claflin Bound Copy
1874 Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly — Victoria Woodhull, St. Paul's, Spirit — Nov 14
$299.99