Emma Hardinge Britten

Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899) was an English advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Much of her life and work was recorded and published in her speeches and writing on the spiritual movement, and an incomplete autobiography was edited by her sister. She is remembered as a writer, orator, and practitioner of the movement. Her books, Modern American Spiritualism (1870) and Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884), are detailed accounts of the history of early modern spiritualism movement in America.

Hardinge was born in London, England in 1823 under the name Emma Floyd; her father Ebenezer was a schoolteacher, and died in 1834. She grew up supporting herself and her family as a musician, trained as a opera singer, and began a stage career.

She developed a reputation for apparent abilities as a spiritual medium during her early years. As a child, Emma had a habit of predicting the futures of people she encountered, relating to them what she had seen in visions, along with information about their deceased relatives of whom she had no prior knowledge. She also developed the amusing talent of preemptively playing songs on the piano, which her audience was thinking (to themselves!) of requesting.

According to her autobiography, Emma's clairvoyant tendencies drew her into participation with a secret London occult society which used magnetics and clairvoyant techniques for experimental purposes. During this period, she was also exposed to sexism and economic discrimination through her involvement with a manipulative member of the society whom she later termed “a baffled sensualist.” Although there is little reliable information on this London occult group, it is suspected that Emma received the name Hardinge from this society, the surname she kept throughout her adult life.

She came to America and while in New York City, she attended Spiritualist séances in the hopes of writing about the gullibility of Americans. During these séances, she begin to experience events from her dramatic childhood. These mystical experiences at séances led her to becoming a part of the Spiritualist movement. Emma was invited by the famous Spiritualist, Horace Day, to host spiritualist séances in the Society for the Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge. She deepened her involvement in the Spiritualist movement as a "trance lecturer" and delivered speeches across the country. Lecture topics included “The Discovering of Spirits,” “The Philosophy of the Spirit Circle,” “Hades,” and “What Is the Basis of the Connection of the Natural and Spiritual Worlds?”

Hardinge also became involved in the campaign efforts of 1864 in support of Abraham Lincoln’s re-election. After delivering a highly successful lecture titled, “The Coming Man; or the Next President of the United States,” Emma was invited to continue her political work on a thirty-two lecture tour.

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