Investigator Alfred Armstrong of oddbooks writes:
Somehow I missed your Guardian column about Edgerly back in June, but I just found it online. Where you refer to the "12th edition" (1929) of Instantaneous Personal Magnetism, and then say "It is unclear whether there were any editions of the book prior to the 12th." Edgerly’s use of the term "edition" was unreliable, but I think the first edition of this book was probably printed in 1888, under the title "Lessons in the mechanics of personal magnetism". Edgerly was dead in 1929: he died in 1926.
He was an intriguing character in that he wrote a vast number of books yet remained almost invisible. He never seems to turn up in anyone else’s memoirs or other likely sources, which is frustrating. The only published biography of William H Danforth, the man who founded the Purina company, does not even mention Edgerly.
Nice column, by the way. Mingus had the right idea: Edgerly’s books are the most dreadful tosh (and I speak as one who has a collection of them).