Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-century Britain is a 2007 book by British historian James Gregory that examines the emergence, organisation and reception of vegetarianism in the Victorian era in the United Kingdom. Published by Tauris Academic Studies, an imprint of I.B. Tauris, the book traces the movement from its roots in the 1830s through the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847 to 1901, analysing its medical and hygienic claims, religious and ethical motivations, relations with radical and reformist politics, everyday practices (including restaurants, banquets and print culture), and the roles of class and gender across Manchester, London and provincial societies. It also considers representations of vegetarians in the press and literature. The volume develops themes first explored in Gregory's 2002 doctoral thesis on Victorian vegetarianism.
The book received generally positive reviews. Commentators praised its depth of research, mapping of national and regional organisation, and treatment of practice and culture; some noted the movement's limited working-class appeal and women's under-representation in leadership, and a few queried terminology or called for fuller treatment of family life and thematic cohesion.
Gregory's doctoral thesis, The Vegetarian Movement in Britain c.1840–1901: A Study of Its Development, Personnel and Wider Connections, situates Victorian vegetarianism within medical and food history, utopian studies and social-movement history. It examines relations with medical orthodoxy and alternative medicine; temperance and teetotalism; animal welfare and anti-cruelty activism; and religious currents such as spiritualism. It also considers how faddism intersected with radical politics (including Chartists and Owenite socialists), and maps activity from before the Vegetarian Society's 1847 founding through c.1847– c.1870 and a revival from c.1875, covering local societies across Britain, restaurants and food stores, the periodical press, class profile and women's roles.[2]
An accompanying biographical index lists about 1,470 vegetarians active c.1837– c.1901, drawn chiefly from the vegetarian press. It also includes some bread and food reformers linked to the movement, while excluding prominent non-vegetarian figures such as Alexis Soyer.[3]
Contents
The book opens by situating nineteenth-century vegetarianism within wider Victorian debates about health, morality and social order, setting out aims, sources and prior scholarship before tracing the movement's rise from the 1830s to the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847. It follows early centres in Manchester and Salford, including the Concordium based at Alcott House, and the formative influence of Bible Christians (Cowherdites).
Having established this organisational frame, the book turns to bodily claims and contemporary understandings of disease. Vegetarian arguments are placed within nineteenth-century dietetics and public health and set against orthodox medical criticism, while activists' use of the language of chemistry, physiology and comparative anatomy is examined. American reform literature, especially the works of William Andrus Alcott and Sylvester Graham, circulated in Britain and shaped discussion of digestion, hygiene and the moral implications attributed to flesh eating; medical scepticism and evidential demands in turn influenced internal rhetoric and public messaging.
A second strand addresses religion and sentiment. The narrative traces Christian and heterodox currents, including Swedenborgianism and secularist milieus, the cultivation of compassion for animals, and links with anti-cruelty campaigning and the anti-vivisection movement. It then situates diet reform among allied causes such as the temperance movement, dress reform and the co-operative movement, and explains how the charge of faddism developed in the periodical press. Changing relations with radical and labour circles are tracked, together with the mix of respectable and countercultural politics that characterised late Victorian vegetarianism.
The analysis moves from ideas to everyday practice: domestic cookery and household economies; the growth of vegetarian restaurants in London and northern towns; large public banquets and exhibition catering; and the commercial supply chains (wholesalers, specialist grocers and publishers) that sustained these activities. A diverse print culture, including The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review, cookery books and menu collections, helped translate advocacy into routine practice.
Attention then turns to participation and leadership. The book discusses class composition, notably lower-middle-class and black-coated workers (clerical and office employees), philanthropy and institutional diets, relations with labour and socialism, and women's organisational and rhetorical work, culminating in dedicated initiatives such as the Women's Vegetarian Union. It charts the shifting regional balance, especially the formation of the London Vegetarian Society under Arnold Hills and its divergence from Manchester, and considers prominent adherents and sympathisers in public life.
Finally, the book examines portrayals of vegetarians in newspapers, magazines and imaginative literature, from caricature and satire in Punch to occasional sympathetic treatments and utopian fiction such as Erewhon. These depictions are read against anxieties about modernity, empire and sentimentalism, and the study closes with late Victorian reflections on the movement's future, setting contemporary hopes and fears against the legacy carried into the Edwardian period and beyond.
Reception
In The English Historical Review, Harriet Ritvo describes the book as an exhaustively researched survey that places Victorian vegetarianism in its social and cultural settings while focusing on organised, institutional activity from the late 1830s onward. She notes a long opening chapter that traces growth, regional tensions, and cycles of stagnation and revival, followed by thematic chapters that emphasise purity and hygiene more than humanitarianism, links with temperance and alternative medicine, occasional overlaps with radical politics, and a public image that was both a liability and an asset. Ritvo highlights Gregory's treatment of everyday practice, including banquets, restaurants, cookbooks, and supply chains, largely oriented toward middle-class patrons and office workers, with limited working-class uptake and women active in numbers but under-represented in leadership. She adds that literary representation was sparse beyond utopian fiction such as Erewhon, that the movement remained marginal despite intermittent mainstream attention, and that its relation to modernity was complex; while raising broader questions about significance and continuity with contemporary vegetarianism, she concludes that the Victorian movement merits study on its own terms.[4]
A review in Medical History by Ian Miller sets the study against assumptions that vegetarianism is a recent development and praises Gregory for showing the nineteenth-century movement's organisational reach and engagement with wider debates about health, morality, and modernity. Miller underscores the limited mass appeal, particularly among working-class audiences, commends the analysis of lived practice, especially the chapter on meals, restaurants, and public banquets, and welcomes the broad treatment of cultural representations across newspapers, journals, and literature. He concludes that the book is an important contribution to understanding Victorian attitudes to food, diet, and digestion.[5]
Writing in the Journal of Social History, John K. Walton calls the book a professional and wide-ranging analysis of a numerically small yet politically and culturally significant movement. He praises its attention to regional dynamics, class and gender composition, and the extensive use of the vegetarian press, while noting minor drawbacks, including occasional grammatical slips, dropped footnotes, a few local inaccuracies such as the siting of Tuxford, and missed opportunities for local case studies. Walton also questions Gregory's academic use of the term "zoophilia" given its modern connotations, but nevertheless judges the study thorough, thoughtful, and well informed, and considers it deserving of wide citation.[6]
In the Journal of British Studies, Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz finds the book timely and deeply researched, arguing that it establishes Victorian vegetarianism as a distinct movement rather than an offshoot of health reform. She credits the reconstruction of organisational infrastructure, including the vegetarian press, societies, and meatless restaurants, and welcomes the analysis of how class and gender shaped participation. While praising the chapter on lived practice and the breadth of sources, she notes limited evidence for experiences within the home and regards some larger themes, including modernity and cultural nationalism, as suggestive rather than fully developed. Her overall judgment is that the study significantly advances understanding of the social, cultural, and political meanings of nineteenth-century British vegetarianism.[7]
A notice in Victorian Studies by Ryan Noah Shapiro argues that Gregory re-centres vegetarianism within Victorian culture and finds social significance in the movement's visibility and in a measurable minority's commitment. Shapiro praises the clear chronological narrative and the analysis of overlapping hygienic, religious, animal-protection and radical strands (including what Gregory terms the conjunction of faddism and radical politics), with particular emphasis on everyday practice reconstructed from menus, recipes, restaurants and the press. He highlights chapters on labour and on science and medicine, notes useful treatment of gender including the Women's Vegetarian Union, and remarks that a somewhat patchwork organisation occasionally limits cohesion. He concludes that the book is meticulously researched and forcefully argued, with relevance across social, medical, labour, gender, and animal history.[8]
Publication history
Of Victorians and Vegetarians was first published in hardback in London by Tauris Academic Studies, an imprint of I.B. Tauris, on 27 June 2007.[9] An ebook edition followed on 29 June 2007,[10] and a paperback edition was released on 23 July 2020.[11]
Victorian Veganism – Sheffield Undergraduate Research Project (2022) by Oscar Pike; includes page references to Of Victorians and Vegetarians and collates related primary and secondary sources
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