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1Patience Worth

By Casper S. Yost

Patience Worth is an examination of the communications between a seventeenth century woman and a certain Mrs. Curran of St. Louis, in 1913. Contact with the spirit world or parlor trick? If the latter, it was well done: the quick-witted repartee appeared unrehearsed, the language was authentic, the references to English nature and life accurate, although Mrs. Curran had never visited England. Mrs. Curran, herself, was a smart, quick-witted socialite of good repute, unlikely to have been a fraudster. She did not 'perform' publicly, only in front of friends and invited guests, and never for money. She was a musician by training, not a writer or poet, yet many of the communications took the form of blank verse and were of a poetical nature. Since its publication, the phenomenon has been much studied and general view is that Patience Worth was the invention of Pearl Curran's imagination. In this volume, we are presented with the evidence and left to decide for ourselves. - Summary by Lynne Thompson