From astrology to publishing
Born in Oxford in 1865, Shirley attended Winchester and New College, Oxford. He worked with Rider from the 1890s. An early editorial venture was The Horoscope, an astrological periodical he edited under the name Rollo Ireton. When he launched The Occult Review in January 1905 he used his own name and chose a much wider brief.
Rider acquired Philip Wellby’s list in 1908. Books and the monthly journal now reached overlapping audiences through the same firm. Shirley edited the Review for roughly two decades. By 1907 it also had a New York edition, whose issues followed the British numbers by a month.
The editor’s promise
The opening editorial made room for disagreement over the very phenomena the magazine proposed to investigate. A letter from the physicist Oliver Lodge appears alongside Shirley’s own words. The library’s first volume preserves that opening exchange. Volume VIII gathers the six issues from July to December 1908. Shirley’s name on their title page identifies the editor who chose and arranged the material. The signed contributions retain their individual authors.
