I’ve been spending a lot of time in the archives of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. Besides just being a generally good time, these periodicals likely are going to be important primary sources in my next book, How Children See: Vision and Childhood Around 1900, which will include a chapter on child mediums.
Today I was looking in particular at Voice of Angels, a nineteenth-century periodical based in Massachusetts purportedly edited and managed by spirits (though mediums).
I am particularly interested in Voice of Angels because it regularly features Tunie, the “angel daughter” of the editor, David C. Densmore. Tunie sometimes acts as a sort of liaison between the spirit world and her father (and the readers of the newspaper). For example, in the issue published on 1 February 1878 (vol. 3, no. 3), Tunie attempts to help a spirit who is not adjusting to the spirit world. Here’s the beginning of that column:
Tunie isn’t the only spirit child who acted as a regular contributor to a nineteenth-century Spiritualist periodical, and in the coming months I’ll be thinking about how these “angel children” both reinforce and transform Romantic notions of childhood.
Victoria Ford Smith 