Framed as evenings of conversation among a circle of friends, Vaughan’s survey moves from early Oriental mysticism and the Neoplatonists through the medieval German mystics and the Spanish saints to Böhme, Swedenborg and the Quietists. Each school is described, quoted and argued over, the speakers’ objections giving a lively Victorian Protestant perspective.
First published in 1856, a year before its author’s early death, it long served as a widely read English history of mysticism. Download the free EPUB.