author
Howard Williams
1837–1931
Best known for The Ethics of Diet, this thoughtful Victorian writer traced the history of vegetarian ideas across centuries and turned them into a moral argument that still feels strikingly modern. His work linked literary learning with a deep concern for kindness toward animals.
2 Audiobooks
The Superstitions of Witchcraft
by Howard Williams
About the author
Born in 1837, Howard Williams was an English writer, historian, and humanitarian whose name is closely tied to the vegetarian movement of the late 19th century. He is chiefly remembered for The Ethics of Diet (1883), a wide-ranging anthology that gathered arguments against flesh-eating from classical writers through to more modern thinkers, helping give the movement a stronger historical and intellectual foundation.
Williams adopted vegetarianism in the 1870s and also spoke out against vivisection, reflecting a broader commitment to humane reform. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he wrote on literary and ethical subjects, combining scholarship with advocacy in a way that made his work useful both to reformers and to curious general readers.
He died in 1931, but his reputation has lasted because his writing did more than defend a diet: it presented compassion as part of a larger moral tradition. For listeners coming to him now, he offers a window into Victorian reform thought at its most earnest, learned, and quietly persuasive.