author
William Hammon
Known mainly through a single controversial 18th-century work, this shadowy writer is remembered as one of the names attached to an early openly atheistic book in English. Very little about the person behind the name can be confirmed, which gives the work an added air of mystery.
1 Audiobook
Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever
by William Hammon, Matthew Turner
About the author
William Hammon is an obscure figure from the late 18th century, active around 1782. Reliable sources agree on one main point: the name is associated with An Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, a reply to the theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley.
Modern reference sources note that Hammon may have been a pseudonym rather than a clearly identified historical individual. The book has also been attributed jointly to Matthew Turner and William Hammon, and it is often described as one of the earliest English works to argue openly and directly for atheism.
Because so little biographical information survives, Hammon is interesting less as a fully documented person than as a literary and intellectual puzzle. For listeners interested in the history of freethought, the name stands at the edge of a lively 18th-century debate about reason, belief, and disbelief.