RUDI SCHNEIDER, A Scientific Examination Of His Mediumship.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Inscribed presentation copy. Publisher's original green cloth with gilt titles to the spine. Lacking the scarce dustwrapper. With a frontispiece portrait of Rudi Schneider and 11 further illustrations in black and white throughout. A good or slightly better copy, the binding firm with some bumping to the spine tips and corners, the cloth a little marked and frayed to the upper corners of the spine. The contents, with the ink stamp of the 'International Institute for Psychical Research Ltd' on the front endpaper, and a previous owner's inscription in blue ink on the front pastedown, are otherwise clean and without loose or torn pages.

Inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front endpaper "To / H. Dennis Bradley, / with kindest / regards / Harry Price / July 1930". An excellent association copy. The recipient, Herbert Dennis Bradley (1878–1934), was a British author, Spiritualist, and direct-voice medium. He claimed to have developed his mediumistic abilities following experiences with the American medium George Valiantine. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the psychical researcher Harry Price investigated the medium Rudi Schneider at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Schneider claimed to levitate objects under séance conditions, but a photograph taken during an experiment on 28 April 1932 appeared to show that he had freed one arm to move a handkerchief. Price argued that this exposed Schneider as fraudulent and called for earlier experimental results to be re-evaluated. His conclusions were supported by figures including Karl Przibram and the magician Henry Evans, who agreed that Schneider had evaded the experimental controls. Price's findings were strongly disputed by members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), who defended Schneider and alleged that the photograph had been staged. SPR member Anita Gregory claimed Price had fabricated the image to discredit both Schneider and SPR research. However, a photographic expert confirmed the image was authentic, and SPR member John L. Randall later concluded that the photograph was genuine and that Price had indeed caught Schneider committing fraud. This volume documents the first two series of Schneider's sittings at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, held between April 1929 and January 1930. It provides a minute-by-minute account of all 26 séances, reproduced from notes taken by Price's secretary, Lucy Kaye. The book also includes séance room plans and technical details of the electrical control system developed by Price, based on methods pioneered by Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing, to whom the work is dedicated. The International Institute for Psychical Research was a short-lived London-based organisation founded in 1934. In December 1938 it merged with the British College of Psychic Science to form the Institute for Experimental Metaphysics, before being renamed the International Institute for Psychic Investigation in January 1939. Its library and records were largely destroyed during the Second World War, and the institute had ceased to exist by 1947.