Emma Hardinge Britten (2 May 1823 – 2 October 1899) was an English advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Much of her life and work was recorded and published in her speeches and writing and an incomplete autobiography edited by her sister. She is remembered as a writer, orator, trance clairvoyant, and spirit medium. Her books, Modern American Spiritualism (1870) and Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884), are detailed accounts of spiritualism in America. Early years Emma Floyd was born in London, England in 1823. Her father Ebenezer, who was a schoolteacher, died in 1834 when Emma was eleven years old. She grew up supporting herself and her family as a musician, trained as an opera singer and began a stage career. Career She developed a reputation for apparent abilities as a spiritual medium during her early years. As a child, Emma had a habit of predicting the futures of people she encountered, relating to them what she had seen in visions, along with information about their deceased relatives of whom she had no prior knowledge. She also developed the amusing talent of preemptively playing songs on the piano, which her audience was thinking (to themselves!) of requesting. According to her autobiography, Emma's clairvoyant tendencies drew her into participation with a secret London occult society which used magnetics and clairvoyant techniques for experimental purposes. During this period, she was also exposed to sexism and economic discrimination through her involvement with a manipulative member of the society whom she later termed "a baffled sensualist." Although there is little reliable information on this London occult group, it is suspected that Emma received the name Hardinge from this society, the surname she kept throughout her adult life. She came to America and while in New York City, she attended Spiritualist séances in the hopes of writing about the gullibility of Americans. During these séances, she begin to experience events from her dramatic childhood. Under the guidance of medium Ada Hoyt, these mystical experiences at séances led her to becoming a part of the Spiritualist movement. Emma was invited by the famous Spiritualist, Horace Day, to host spiritualist séances in the Society for the Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge. She deepened her involvement in the Spiritualist movement as a "trance lecturer" and delivered speeches across the country. Lecture topics included "The Discovering of Spirits," “The Philosophy of the Spirit Circle," “Hades," and "What Is the Basis