{"product_id":"three-spiritualist-novels","title":"Three Spiritualist Novels","description":"This volume brings together for the first time three novels that illustrate the distinguished American writer Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's enduring interest in the afterlife. The daughter of a Calvinist minister, Phelps could not reconcile herself to the idea of a heaven full of spirits who had cut their ties to those left behind on Earth. Rather, she became convinced of the viability of the Spiritualist view that a vital link to earthly life continues in the hereafter.\u003cbr\u003e Articulating an alternative to conservative church doctrine, Phelps assured her readers--many of them women bereft of their loved ones by the Civil War--that Spiritualist ideas about the afterlife were not fundamentally at odds with Scripture. Like the protagonist of \u003ci\u003eThe Gates Ajar\u003c\/i\u003e, these readers wanted to believe \"something actual, something pleasant\" about the world to come, not \"glittering generalities\" about a \"dreadful Heaven\" where their loved ones were too busy singing and worshiping to have any thought of those left behind.\u003cbr\u003e All three of the novels collected here--\u003ci\u003eThe Gates Ajar\u003c\/i\u003e (1868), \u003ci\u003eBeyond the Gates\u003c\/i\u003e (1883), and \u003ci\u003eThe Gates Between\u003c\/i\u003e (1887)--describe heaven as a perfected version of earthly life and the afterlife as a chance to make up for opportunities squandered on Earth. A grieving sister finds consolation in the Spiritualist idea of a continued connection with her beloved brother; a dying woman finds her soulmate in the afterlife; an erring husband makes amends across the line between the living and the dead.\u003cbr\u003e Tremendously popular in Phelps's lifetime, these novels offer a way of reconciling human beings to earthly loss and sorrow, assuring readers of an afterlife both restorative and compensatory. They also provide an intriguing look at a phenomenon that preoccupied nineteenth-century America and continues to fascinate us in the twenty-first century.\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"University of Illinois Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54258693669208,"sku":"9780252069079","price":26.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780252069079.jpg?v=1781693144","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/three-spiritualist-novels","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}