Vol. 1 pp. xii, 388, 12mo. 220mm. Original publisher's pictorial full green cloth binding lettered in gilt and black and decorated in black and gilt. Cover depicts a mountainous scene with lightening coming from the sky framed by gilt flowers. Spine lettered and decorated similarly. Cover gilt bright and boards are clean. Spine clean. Corners mildly bumped. Contents clean. Hardbound. Very Good. George Chainey began his public career in the middle 1870s as a Christian minister in Evansville, Indiana, eventually becoming the pastor of something called the Church of the Unity. Chainey 'de-churched' into free thought in April of 1880 (announcing from the pulpit that he was no longer a Christian, and recommending that the hymnals in his church be sold for their value as waste paper, and getting kicked out of Freemasonry for infidelity for his troubles), and moved his family (wife Martha, and sons Ralph, Clair and Earl) to Boston, where he becomes a powerful propagandist for free thought, lecturing under the auspices of the Ethical Society of Boston. He starts a magazine, This World, which is notable in secular cultural history for its advocacy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (which gets it banned from the mails by the Postal Service), and becomes friendly with Bright, Ingersoll, Putnam and other free thought luminaries. Booksellers label on inside pastedown 'For Sale by Phila. Occult Book co. 2838 N. Eleventh St. Philadelphia, Pa.' NW63
