The Theosophist

An Introduction by David Reigle

How do you access the very rare early volumes of The Theosophist? By clicking your mouse button, of course! But it was not always this easy. Only the largest Theosophical libraries had these volumes, and even if
you were lucky enough to get to one of these libraries, access to these
volumes was usually restricted because they were so old and fragile.
Where, then, did the scans here provided come from?

How to access these rare volumes in order to make a reproduction of them
that could be reprinted was was my question in the 1970s. After
gingerly turning their fragile pages under supervision at a major
Theosophical library, I realized that I would never be able to get
permission to take these volumes to a photocopy machine and subject them
to almost certain injury. So much for Plan A. I would have to try to
find them at a public library, where nobody cared, or at least, where
nobody would be watching me as I did the deed.

In those days, there was no computerized World Library Catalogue (OCLC).
One instead used the massive printed volumes of the National Union
Catalogue. These showed that seventeen major libraries in the U.S. had
at least some volumes of The Theosophist. Further inquiry, however,
revealed that only a couple of these libraries had the coveted volumes
1-6. These were Theological Libraries, where these volumes were kept
under seal, so as not to spoil the impressionable young minds of our
aspiring clergy with pagan ideas. So much for Plan B.

Trying to figure out Plan C was a hard one. I had pretty much resolved
to try to visit one of these Theological Libraries and humbly throw
myself at the mercy of the kind Fathers, when I saw an announcement in a
Theosophical journal that microfilms of volumes 1-6 of The Theosophist
were available! I immediately contacted the person who had made these
microfilms, the late Karl Alston. It turns out that he had obtained
these as surplus volumes from Krotona.

When Theosophical Lodges closed down, or Theosophists died, their books
often went to the Krotona Library. Unneeded duplicates were then sold at
the Krotona Bookstore. I noticed on a series of visits there that some
old issues of The Theosophist were out for sale, and then on subsequent
visits, other old issues were out for sale. So I inquired as to where
they were coming from. The bookstore manager, the late Vera Bressler,
explained the situation and then kindly took my wife Nancy and I
upstairs and showed us all the old volumes of The Theosophist that were
unneeded duplicates. Thanks to her kindness, we were able to purchase
the whole run of The Theosophist except volumes 1-6.

Karl Alston had gone there some time later, and was able to purchase
volumes 1-6. When we connected, as described above, he was completely
willing to let us photocopy these volumes. His whole idea was to make
them available, which is why he had them microfilmed. We had access to a
very high quality copy machine, and at long last were able to photocopy
them. Old volumes such as these have many flaws. We had to go carefully
through them looking for missing pages, which were especially frequent
in the supplements, places where the print was cut off when the volumes
were trimmed too closely during binding, ink blobs from the printing
process that obscured some of the print, creases in the paper that
skewed the print, etc.

For the needed replacement pages, we were able to get access to these
volumes in a Theological Library after all. Karl, living in the San
Francisco bay area, had seen that these volumes were held in the Library
of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. For some reason, their
holdings were not listed in the National Union Catalogue. It seems that
their set of the early volumes of The Theosophist had belonged to
Archibald Keightley, who along with his uncle Bertram Keightley helped
HPB arrange and edit The Secret Doctrine. I do not know how this library
got these volumes.

Richard Robb of Wizards Bookshelf was able to obtain a copy of the 1884
reset reprint of the 1879 volume 1, and he reprinted this in 1979,
printing 2,000 copies. After that, he told us that he would never do
another volume, as it was just too much work. So, although being kindly
warned of the difficulties involved, Nancy and I, as Eastern School
Press, went ahead and reprinted volume 2 in 1983, printing 500 copies.
Our intention was to reprint the other volumes, but there were never the
funds to do so. We later made these volumes available as photocopies.
Note that our volume 1 here is the original 1879 printing rather than
the 1884 reset reprint.

Some years later, Daniel Caldwell also wanted to see these volumes
become more widely available. Kessinger Publishing Company was then
reprinting whatever volumes of The Theosophist that they could find, but
of course, they could not find the early volumes. So Daniel paid us to
make photocopies of volumes 1-14, and to then send them to Kessinger
without charge to be reprinted. These facts are are being publicly
stated to obviate any question of rights, or of the sources for any of
these reproductions.

It had by now become feasible for websites to handle the large memory
requirements of books as scanned images. So Joe Fulton sent out an
inquiry on Nov. 11, 2010, to see if anyone had volumes 1-6 and would
make them available to be scanned and put up on the web. This initiative
of Joe's led to the scanning of these volumes, and here they are. Marc
Demarest did a tremendous amount of work on this, in not only providing
technical assistance, but also personally processing the scans for
posting.

When these volumes first came out, there was no internet, no television,
and no radio. Subscribers eagerly awaited them in the mail. It was
their contact with a new and different world. All of us who have been
involved in the long process of making them available on the web hope
that you will enjoy them, and perhaps get a sense of the excitement that
they brought to their first readers.


--David Reigle