Translation as a vehicle for dissemination of the spiritualist doctrine: the case of Defensa del espiritismo by A.R. Wallace

Abstract

The second half of nineteenth-century Spain witnessed the growth and development of the spiritualist movement, which stimulated translation. This article focuses on A.R. Wallace’s seminal work On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, which played a crucial role in the dissemination of this doctrine. Published in Spain in 1891 under the title Defensa del espiritismo, the book’s paratexts and the translation procedures employed by the translator, Alfonso Herrera Fernández, will be here analysed.