Life and career
Robert James Lees came from Hinckley in Leicestershire and spent part of his working life in London as a journalist and guide. He described experiences in which visitors from the spirit world appeared to him. His reputation as a Spiritualist rested particularly on the books he said those encounters inspired. Later in life he lived in Leicester with his daughter Eva, who helped preserve the public record of his work.
During his lifetime, stories circulated about a supposed role in identifying Jack the Ripper. A newspaper account that made him the psychic detective who identified a physician as the murderer was a hoax. The story became attached to his name quite apart from the religious teaching for which readers had sought out his books. He died in Leicester in January 1931.
Work and ideas
Through the Mists, published in 1898, introduced a narrator who has died and must learn how to live among the dead. Lees presented the narrative as a communication he had received. Its sequel, The Life Elysian, continued the account, and The Gate of Heaven developed its theology further. The first book went through repeated impressions, reaching readers well beyond the circle who had known Lees in person.
He also wrote for the market in imaginative fiction. The Car of Phoebus, published by John Long in 1903, brought reincarnation into an adventure about a lost people. This novel and the Spiritualist sequence share an interest in the persistence of identity. They reached readers with different expectations about whether the world they were entering had been imagined or witnessed.
