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Deveney's criticisms of The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1

Aug 19, 2004 01:29 PM
by kpauljohnson


Hey,

Most of you have seen Dr. Tillett's criticisms of the dispute between
Dr. Algeo and the Cooper family and for those who haven't, just search
the theos-talk archives for recent posts from Tillett. I was glad to
see John Patrick Deveney, someone who hasn't to my knowledge been
involved in any controversy with John Algeo in the past, write a
thorough review of the Letters volume. In light of copyright
concerns, I will suggest that interested readers obtain the current
(July) issue of Theosophical History for the full review. But I will
provide a few selected criticisms from the review that raise concerns
related to those suggested by Dr. Tillett:

The editor in his preface acknowledges the Herculean labors of the
late John Cooper in adding to the corpus of letters and in preparing
them for publication, but states that, for unspecified reasons, none
of Cooper's work could be used "directly," and that even his
transcriptions of texts were not used because they were "not
accurate." This is a surprising charge, directed as it is toward a
person known for his meticulous work and now unavailable to defend
himself...The acknowledgments of sources are curiously phrased--
ambiguous at best and ungracious at worst-- capable of leaving the
impression that the editor unearthed some rare letter in the original
obscure source...[Deveney here cites two cases in which documentary
discoveries by Joscelyn Godwin are not acknowledged and another in
which Ted Davy's research is not acknowledged]...the credit for the
research lies elsewhere, and due acknowledgment should have been
given... None of these [a dozen or so other minor errors mentioned by
Deveney in his review] seriously mars this work, but I would attribute
their presence to the decision not to use the years of research done
by John Cooper and to the failure to make this more of a cooperative
and collaborative venture by calling on the expertise of those who
were, in fact, the ones who unearthed in the first place much of the
new material included here.

KPJ




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