Edward Maitland English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 humanitarian

Humanitarianism

In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...

 writer, was born at Ipswich

Ipswich

Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...

 and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate

Perpetual curate

A Perpetual Curate was a clergyman of the Church of England officiating as parish priest in a small or sparsely peopled parish or districtAs noted below the term perpetual was not to be understood literally but was used to indicate he was not a curate but the parish priest and of higher...

 of St James's Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived abroad, first in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and then as a commissioner of Crown lands in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. After his return to England in 1857 he took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to have acquired a new sense by which be was able to discern the spiritual condition of other people. He became a member of the Theosophical Society

Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society is an organization formed in 1875 to advance the spiritual principles and search for Truth known as Theosophy. The original organization, after splits and realignments has several successors...

 and associated with Dr. Anna Kingsford

Anna Kingsford

Anna Kingsford, née Bonus , was an English anti-vivisection, vegetarian and women's rights campaigner.She was of the first English women to obtain a degree in medicine, after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and the only medical student at the time to graduate without having experimented on a single...

 (1846-1888), one of the first female British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 physicians and supporter of women's rights

Women's rights

Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...

, animal rights

Animal rights

Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...

, vegetarianism

Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...

 and, who, besides being one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become a student of Theosophy

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

; with her he brought out Keys of the Creeds (1875), The Perfect Way: or the Finding of Christ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society

Hermeticism

Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...

 in 1884. After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union

Esoteric Christianity

Esoteric Christianity is a term which refers to an ensemble of spiritual currents which regard Christianity as a mystery religion, and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public but accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened",...

in 1891, and wrote her Life and Letters (1896).

Selected publications

• 1875 - The Keys of the Creeds
• 1877 - The Soul, and How It Found Me
• 1882 - The Perfect Way; or, the Finding of Christ
• 1891 - The Bible’s Own Account of Itself
• 1892 - THE “NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION”: Being an Abstract of the Doctrine and a Statement of the Origin, Object, Basis, Method and Scope of the Esoteric Christian Union
• 1893 - The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the New Gospel of Interpretation
• 1896 - Anna Kingsford – Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work
• 1912 - Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism
• 1916 - The Credo of Christendom: and Other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity

External links

• Works by Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford at Anna Kingsford Site.

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