Emma Hardinge Britten's story deserves to be told and understood within a
variety of historical contexts, including Victorian culture, religion, and politics. Her life
was extraordinary, and yet reflects broader transformations underway for women and for
all Victorians. Although Britten was born English, her life trajectory made her a global
citizen of the Anglo-centric world. She lived between two continents and travelled in her
work as a Spiritualist propagandist/political activist as far away as Australia and New
Zealand. As she herself expressed to her contemporaries in the middle of the nineteenth
century, America felt like "the land of her adoption - where she was spiritually
developed, and in whose broad freedom and advanced spiritual light she wishe[d] to
spend most of her life."1 Musician, actor, writer, theologian, political activist, magazine
publisher, spirit medium, lecturer, Spiritualist missionary, and self-described witch:
Emma Hardinge Britten encompassed all of these descriptions.
