Charles Bradlaugh

Standard Name: Bradlaugh, Charles

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships	Annie Besant	AB 's biographer Anne Taylor and other historians say she was in love with Bradlaugh , and he at least to some degree returned her feelings. But he was married, though his wife, Susannah or...
Family and Intimate relationships	Annie Besant	The custody decision made it unthinkable that AB might secure a divorce in order to marry Charles Bradlaugh (whose wife had now died). Mount, Ferdinand. “Get off your knees”. London Review of Books, Vol. 33 , No. 14, 30 June 2011, pp. 18-19. 18
Family and Intimate relationships	Annie Besant	It is hardly surprising in view of the other aspects of her reputation that AB was assumed to be sexually involved with her successive, influential friends, Charles Bradlaugh and Edward Aveling .
Friends, Associates	Edna Lyall	She became a good friend of Bradlaugh himself and also of his daughter Hypatia . Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates	Annie Besant	AB met Charles Bradlaugh in 1874, the year after forming her friendships with Thomas Scott and Charles Voysey . Bradlaugh was a lawyer, a militant atheist, republican, and teetotaller, a huge man with a huge...
Friends, Associates	Matilda Betham-Edwards	MBE set a great deal of store by meeting men distinguished as authors or in other fields, as a spur to literary achievement of her own. She was given to boasting of her acquaintance with...
Intertextuality and Influence	Edna Lyall	Charles Bradlaugh himself tutored EL on the subject of secularism for this novel, which was at first to be called Erica. She had nearly finished writing it by the end of 1882, but during...
Intertextuality and Influence	Annie Besant	AB published anonymously in 1875, with Thomas Scott , her first pamphlet on the topic of atheism. On the Nature and Existence of God owed much to the influence of her new friend Charles Bradlaugh
Literary responses	Edna Lyall	The Morning Post gave the book a good review, Escreet, J. M. The Life of Edna Lyall. Longmans, Green and Co., 1904. 45 but the London Quarterly called this and EL 's next work dangerous or wicked in their sympathetic portrayal of atheism. Corrick, Georgia. “’You will Blame Me . But . It Seemed to me Simply a Thing that Had to be Done’: Women’s Transgressions and Moral Choices in Edna Lyall’s Novels”. Women’s Writing, Vol. 14 , No. 3, Oct. 2007, pp. 476-95. 477 and n1 In deploring...
Material Conditions of Writing	Edna Lyall	She began writing it on a sunny August morning at Farnham, after reading in the Daily News of how Bradlaugh , the well-known radical, in prison for refusing to take the parliamentary oath on...
Occupation	Annie Besant	Under Charles Bradlaugh 's influence, AB began lecturing and writing for the National Secular Society . Taylor, Anne, 1932 -. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. 71-3
politics	Edith J. Simcox	Although EJS was nominated to the Council of the newly revived International Working Men's Association , along with Annie Besant , Harriet Law , and Charles Bradlaugh , she subsequently withdrew. McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press, 1961. 42-3
politics	Edith J. Simcox	On 12 December 1877 EJS remarked in her autobiography that a Council was appointed to which I was nominated, then Mrs Besant , then Mrs Harriet Law , and Mr Bradlaugh in between. I had...
politics	Edna Lyall	EL met Charles Bradlaugh after writing to him about a review of her second novel, Donovan, published in his National Reformer. Payne, George A. "Edna Lyall:" an Appreciation. John Heywood. 28 She made three contributions to the Election Fund set up to...
politics	Annie Besant	AB became secretary of the Malthusian League (a new version of Bradlaugh 's 1860s league), which sought legal reform to end prosecution for public discussion of population issues and birth control. Taylor, Anne, 1932 -. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. 121

Timeline

25 August 1857

The Obscene Publications Act allowed for the censorship of pornographic materials entering Britain.

Ledbetter, Rosanna. A History of the Malthusian League: 1877-1927. Ohio State University Press, 1976.

The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Printed by J. Bentham, 1762–2024.

605

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.

Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.

41-2

February 1878

The acquittal of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in their famous obscenity trial meant that distribution of birth control information was no longer illegal.

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.

46-7

Fryer, Peter. The Birth Controllers. Secker and Warburg, 1965.

164

1892

Sixty-seven year-old phrenologist Henry Loader was prosecuted for selling two birth control manuals, The Wife's Handbook and Fruits of Philosophy.

Fryer, Peter. The Birth Controllers. Secker and Warburg, 1965.

172

McLaren, Angus. Birth Control in Nineteenth Century England. Croom Helm, 1978.

224

Texts

Bradlaugh, Charles et al. “Publishers’ Preface”. Fruits of Philosophy: An Essay on the Population Question, 2nd ed., Freethought Publishing, 1877, pp. 3-7.