Edmund Gurney (1847-1888), whose name is little-known today, was a brilliant figure in the intellectual and artistic life of London a century ago. Friend of George Eliot, Samuel Butler, Henry Sidgwick, Leslie Stephen, and William James, with whom he carried on an extensive correspondence, he contributed articles to the leading journals of his day on philosophy, psychology, religion, education, literature, and the arts.

In The Mind of Edmund Gurney, the author explores the wide-ranging thought and influence of this complex and charismatic man as revealed in his published work, which suggested that much more was to come. Gurney's monumental work on the aesthetics of music, The Power of Sound (1880), remains unsurpassed as a penetrating examination of the art.

Gurney was also deeply concerned with problems of social welfare, and with what are now termed "animal rights," as his correspondence with Charles Darwin attests. In addition, Gurney was the author of the earliest significant papers in England on hypnosis, and he was one of the founders, in 1882, of the Society for Psychical Research.