author
Anna Bonus Kingsford
1846–1888
A fierce Victorian reformer, mystic, and physician, she brought unusual conviction to everything she wrote and fought for. Her life joined spiritual inquiry with public campaigns for animals, women, and a gentler way of living.
1 Audiobook
Dreams and Dream Stories
by Anna Bonus Kingsford
About the author
Born in 1846 in Stratford, England, Anna Bonus Kingsford became known as a writer, lecturer, and activist with wide-ranging interests. She campaigned against vivisection, supported women's rights, and argued for vegetarianism at a time when all three causes were far from mainstream.
She also pursued medicine in Paris and was one of the first English women to earn a medical degree. Her studies and public work fed into each other: she wanted a form of medicine that did not depend on cruelty to animals, and she brought that moral passion into her essays, speeches, and books.
Kingsford was also deeply involved in spiritual and esoteric thought, especially Theosophy and her own religious interpretations developed with Edward Maitland. She died in 1888 at just 41, but her reputation endured as that of a strikingly original Victorian thinker who tried to unite compassion, intellect, and faith.