Status | Defunct |
---|---|
Founded | 1877 |
Founder | Annie Besant, Charles Bradlaugh |
Country of origin | U.K. |
Headquarters location | 28 Stonecutter Street, London E.C. |
Distribution | National |
Publication types | Books and tracts |
The Freethought Publishing Company was established in 1877 by Annie Besant [1] and Charles Bradlaugh [2] to publish books and pamphlets to promote the cause of secularism, social reform and freedom of thought. Their publications were printed initially at 28 Stonecutter Street, London E.C and then at 63 Fleet Street, London E.C.
One of their first publications in 1877 was to reproduce a treatise on birth control written by a physician, Charles Knowlton, which had been published anonymously in the US in 1832 as The Fruits of Philosophy. [3] The treatise advocated controlling reproduction and described methods to prevent conception. Besant and Bradlaugh were prosecuted and found guilty, but the verdict was quashed on a technicality. [4] In the same year the company published Annie Besant's influential tract entitled The Law of Population: Its Consequences and Its Bearing Upon Human Conduct and Morals. [5]
The company published a series of volumes called the International Library of Science and Freethought including books by George Holyoake, who had coined the term ‘secularism’, and translations from the German of The Pedigree of Man by Ernst Haeckel [6] and of Mind in Animals by Ludwig Büchner. [7] The company published essays by Edward Aveling, a spokesman for evolution and a founder member of the Socialist League; by Logan Mitchell, who wrote The Christian Mythology Unveiled; [8] and republished essays by American freethinkers such as Robert Ingersoll and Moncure Conway. The company also published the Hall of Science Manuals with titles by Besant and Aveling. [9]
The company published little after Bradlaugh died in 1891 and the last original publication was issued in 1902, a pamphlet written by Charles Watts.
Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She became the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
The National Secular Society (NSS) is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and the separation of church and state. It holds that no one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of their religion or lack of it. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866.
Charles Bradlaugh was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851.
The Golden Age of Freethought is the mid 19th-century period in United States history which saw the development of the socio-political movement promoting freethought. Anti-authoritarian and intellectually liberating historical eras had existed many times in history, notably in eighteenth century France. But the period roughly from 1875 to 1914 is referred to by at least one contemporary writer as "the high-water mark of freethought as an influential movement in American society". It began around 1856 and lasted at least through the end of the century; author Susan Jacoby places the end of the Golden Age at the start of World War I.
Charles Knowlton was an American physician and writer.
George Jacob Holyoake was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor. He coined the terms secularism in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secularist paper, the Reasoner, from 1846 to June 1861, and a co-operative one, The English Leader, in 1864–1867.
Edward Bibbins Aveling was an English comparative anatomist and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution, atheism and socialism. He was also a playwright and actor.
George William Foote was an English radical journalist, writer, editor, publisher, and prominent secularist. He was a leading advocate of freethought, founding and editing notable publications such as The Freethinker and The Secularist and co-founding the British Secular Union. Additionally, he ran a publishing business known as the Pioneer Press. Foote was convicted of blasphemy in 1883 for his satirical attacks on Christianity published in The Freethinker and sentenced to a year in prison. He authored over eighty works, mainly polemical pamphlets, with his editorial essays from The Freethinker compiled into Flowers of Freethought (1893–94).
Bishopsgate Library, now known as Bishopgate Institute's Special Collections and Archives is an independent, charity-funded library located within the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London.
Events from the year 1877 in the United Kingdom.
Charles Watts was an English writer, lecturer and publisher, who was prominent in the secularist and freethought movements in both Britain and Canada.
Charles Albert Watts was an English secularist editor and publisher. He founded the journal Watts's Literary Guide, which later became the New Humanist magazine, and the Rationalist Press Association. His father Charles Watts was also a prominent secularist writer. Father and son are sometimes confused with each other, and Charles Albert Watts is sometimes referred to as C. A. Watts or Charles Watts Jr.
The Malthusian League was a British organisation which advocated the practice of contraception and the education of the public about the importance of family planning. It was established in 1877 and was dissolved in 1927. The organisation was secular, utilitarian, individualistic, and "above all malthusian." The organisation maintained that it was concerned about the poverty of the British working class and held that over-population was the chief cause of poverty.
The National Reformer was a secularist weekly publication in 19th-century Britain (1860–1893), noted for providing a longstanding "strong, radical voice" in its time, advocating atheism. Under the editorship of Charles Bradlaugh for the majority of its lifespan, each issue stated that "The editorial policy of the Paper is Republican, Atheistic, and Malthusian, but all opinions are freely admitted, provided only that they be expressed reasonably and in proper language."
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner was a British peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker, and the daughter of Charles Bradlaugh.
Harriet Teresa Law was a leading British freethinker in 19th-century London.
Eunice Kate Watts was a British secularist and feminist writer and lecturer. She was one of the most prominent women active in the British freethought movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The British Secular Union was a secularist organisation, founded in August 1877, primarily as a response to what its founders regarded as the "dictatorial" powers of Charles Bradlaugh as President of the National Secular Society.
Edward Truelove was an English radical publisher and freethinker.
Robert Joseph Forder was an English freethinker, radical, publisher and bookseller and birth controller. He was particularly associated with the career of Charles Bradlaugh and the National Secular Society (NSS).
{{cite book}}
: |website=
ignored (help)