Cooke, Christopher ‘Curiosities of Occult Literature’ Arthur Hall, Smart, and Allen, unclearly dated[1]. With unique manuscript insertions by Cooke, including his artwork, highlights of which are detailed below:
- Contains a jocular sketch of Helena-Petrona Blavatsky; a figure for the Greenwich Observatory; a large sketch of a person on horseback en route to Slough, entitled ‘Coningsby hires a hack’; a natus of Lord Brougham; two horoscopes of ‘persons burnt’; and physiognomic sketches of Aries, Scorpio and Taurus.
Cloth (frayed along front hinge and slightly torn and chipped at extremities of spine ). [1 page of annotations] + [1] + [1 page of annotations] + [1] + [1 page of annotations] + [pp. v-vii] + [1 page of annotations] + [pp. ix-xi] + [1] + [12] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 13-24] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 25-36] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 37-48] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 49-60] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 61-72] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 73-84] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 85-96] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 97-108] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 109-120] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 121-132] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 133-144] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 145-156] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 157-168] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 169-180] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 181-192] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 193-204] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 205-216] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 217-228] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 229-240] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 241-252] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 253-264] + [2 pages of annotations] + [pp. 265-275] + [1 page of advertisements] + [stub of a probable torn-out colour plate] + [10 pages of annotations] + [manuscript index].
[1] Dated 1863 in print, but apparently rebound with manuscript insertions by the author in 1878, as indicated by the added date on the spine of each copy
About this Book Scan
Carefully scanned from our original printing enhanced by scores of pages of the author’s additional handwritten notes and illustrations.
19th century lawyer turned apologist for astrology Christopher Cooke wrote Curiosities of Occult Literature as a memoir of his experiences working alongside Zadkiel (Richard Morrison) and observing the British occult community in the mid-19th century. The original printing of 1863 appears to have sold poorly at first, perhaps on account of the relatively peripheral interest of the personal story he had to tell to the general public. However, 15 years later, many sets of sheets were bound up with Cooke’s handwritten notes and artwork to help them sell, and dozens of these individually modified copies remain in circulation today, each one unique and distinctive.