---
title: "The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr."
description: 1902 study of Joseph Smith by I. Woodbridge Riley, a doctoral thesis presented at Yale University, with an introductory preface by George Trumbull Ladd. Ten chapters on Smith's ancestry, visions, the Book of Mormon, and later activities, with four appendices and a bibliography.
authors:
  - Riley, Isaac Woodbridge
collections:
  - history
tags:
  - history
  - joseph-smith
  - psychology
  - critical-studies
  - 20th-century
published: "1902"
publisher: Dodd, Mead & Company
publisher_place: New York
edition: First edition (New York, May 1902)
language: en
type: book
reference: "I. Woodbridge Riley, *The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr.* (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1902), \"Author's Preface.\""
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/foundermormonism00rilerich
  identifier: foundermormonism00rilerich
  scan: University of California copy of the 1902 Dodd, Mead & Company first edition, Internet Archive
  transcription: OCR text of the 1902 scan, with line-break hyphens joined, running heads and page numbers removed, library stamps dropped and obvious scan errors corrected; printed pagination kept as page markers. Footnotes are kept as bracketed notes. The bibliography is set one printed line per paragraph. Not proofread against the page images.
curator_note: A critical academic study by a non-Mormon author, published as a Yale doctoral thesis. Its psychological interpretation reflects early-twentieth-century scholarship and is included as a historical source.
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: 1902 US publication (New York, Dodd, Mead & Company; copyright notice of 1902); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States
  source: https://archive.org/details/foundermormonism00rilerich
  publication_year: 1902
  note: Publication year of the edition used is 1902; any modern rights notice in the Internet Archive metadata does not apply to this 1902 text.
---

# Author's Preface

THIS study has been offered to the Philosophical Faculty of Yale University as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Materials I gathered at Salt Lake City in 1894 were utilized in 1898 for a Master of Arts thesis on the ' Metaphysics of Mormonism.' The sources employed in the present work, as given in the appended Bibliography, are, in the main, to be found in the Berrian collection of the New York Public Library.

Beside rare first editions and Church publications suppressed by the Utah Saints, use is here made of some hitherto unpublished manuscripts. For these I am indebted to various correspondents, and especially to Mr. William Evarts Benjamin of New York City. For suggestions and criticisms my thanks are also due to Prof. William H. Brewer, of the Sheffield Scientific School, and to Prof. Charles J. Bartlett of the Yale Medical School.

The aim of this work is to examine Joseph Smith's character and achievements from the standx

PREFACE

point of recent psychology. Sectarians and phrenologists, spiritualists and mesmerists have variously interpreted his more or less abnormal performances, — it now remains for the psychologist to have a try at them.

New Haven, Conn., May, igos.