Although Shadows in Summerland is a work of historical fiction, William H. Mumler really did claim to photograph spirits in Boston and New York in the 1860s with the help of his wife, Hannah Mumler, the medium J. H. Conant and the Spiritualist “investigator” William Guay. And while I have taken significant liberties with the chronologies and personal details of the lives of Mumler and his cohort, as well as all those actual historical persons whom Mumler would’ve encountered in Boston Spiritualist circles, the following works were indispensable to me in my research, my world-building and my consideration (and sometimes subsequent discarding) of historical fact:
The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer by Louis Kaplan (University of Minnesota Press, 2008);
Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 by Karen Halttunen (Yale University Press, 1982);
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America by Anne Braude (Indiana University Press, 1989);
Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticisms, Its Consistencies and Contradictions by E.W. Capron (B. Marsh, 1855);
Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg (HarperCollins, 2004);
A Practical Guide to the Collodion Process in Photography: Describing the Method of Obtaining Collodion Negatives, and Of Printing Them by George Washington Wilson (Longman & Co, 1855);
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (Vintage, 2008);
The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis, The Seer of Poughkeepsie by Andrew Jackson Davis (William Rider & Son, 1923);
A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900 by Stephen Puleo (Beacon Press, 2010); and
Civil War Era Etiquette by R.L. Shep (R.L. Shep, 1988).
I am also indebted to Professor Stefan Andriopoulos of Columbia University, who provided me with many valuable leads as I began my research into Mumler and spirit photography. Ditto the town of Lily Dale, a.k.a. “The City of Light,” a.k.a. “The Town That Talks to the Dead,” for hosting me so openly and warmly when I visited there on a research trip in fall of 2009. And most of all, perhaps, The Metropolitan Museum of Art for curating the exhibit “The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult” in fall of 2005, where I first conceived of writing a historical novel about William Mumler. Eleven years later, here is one.
Nor would this book have been possible without the sage guidance and support of writers, editors, friends—and you, reader. So thank you to those who read and helped make over early (and much longer) beta-drafts of this novel: Darcy Roake, Lincoln Michel, Anya Groner & Nicole LaBombard. Thank you to those who both published excerpts from the novel, and other bits of Spiritualism-related output that I completed in the course of writing it: Ryan Bradford in Black Candies; Tobias Carroll in Volume 1 Brooklyn; and Heidi Julavits and Andi Mudd in The Believer. Thank you, too, to the literary mentors and models without which Shadows in Summerland would have withered on the vine: John Wray’s Canaan’s Tongue, Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, Sarah Waters’ Affinity and Henry James’ The Bostonians. Thank you to Laird Barron, Julia Fierro, Bennett Simms and Heidi Julavits for the blurbage, given with grace. A table-tipping, violin-weeping thank you to everyone at ChiZine Publications and their affiliates: Sandra Kasturi, Brett Savory, Erik Mohr, Samantha Beiko, Michael Rowe and Bracken MacLeod. Finally, thank you to the greater New Orleans literary community, each of whom, in some small way, helped see this novel into being: the No-Name Writing Group, Matt Carney & Gladin Scott at Maple Street Books and Nathan Martin and Sara Slaughter of the Room 220 Series, among many others.
And then there are those without whom, not a thing:
My extended family, blood-related and otherwise, but especially Anne Guite and Matt Nimetz, who granted me invaluable access to their property in upstate New York where large chunks of this novel were written.
My parents, Marjorie Milstein & Eric Van Young.
My Little-Face, Sebastian Roake Van Young.
Darcy, Darcy, Darcy, you. Somewhat mystifyingly, Andrew Jackson Davis, the grandfather of Spiritualism, wrote: “The association of particles or spirits, thus drawn together, is an outward expression of inward marriage . . . Heart calls to heart.” So too our hearts, Darcy dear, in this life and the life to come.