Life of Emma Harding Britton

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