Anna Kingsford

{{Infobox person

| name = Anna Kingsford

| image = Anna Kingsford 3.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Kingsford in the 1880s

| alt = photograph

| birth_name = Anna Bonus

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1846|9|16|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Stratford, Essex (now London), England

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1888|2|22|1846|9|6|df=yes}}

| death_place = London, England

| resting_place = Saint Eata's churchyard, Atcham

| education = Medical degree

| alma_mater = University of Paris

| occupation = Editor, The Lady's Own Paper

| known_for = Anti-vivisection, vegetarianism and women's rights activism

| notable_works = The Perfect Way in Diet

| spouse = {{marriage|Algernon Godfrey Kingsford|1867}}

| children = 1

| signature = Anna Kingsford signature.JPG

}}

Anna Kingsford ({{Nee|Annie Bonus}}; 16 September 1846 – 22 February 1888) was an English anti-vivisectionist, Theosophist, a proponent of vegetarianism and a women's rights campaigner.

She was one 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 animal. She pursued her degree in Paris, graduating in 1880 after six years of study, so that she could continue her animal advocacy from a position of authority. Her final thesis, L'Alimentation Végétale de l'Homme, was on the benefits of vegetarianism, published in English as The Perfect Way in Diet (1881).Rudacille, pp. 31, 46 She founded the Food Reform Society that year, travelling within the UK to talk about vegetarianism, and to Paris, Geneva, and Lausanne to speak out against animal experimentation.

Kingsford was interested in Buddhism and Gnosticism, and became active in the Theosophical movement in England, becoming president of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society in 1883. In 1884 she founded the Hermetic Society, which lasted until 1887 when her health declined.Christof, Catharine. [http://www.larosadiparacelso.com/index.php/rosa/article/view/25 "Feminist Action in and through Tarot and Modern Occult Society: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, UK and The Builders of the Adytum, USA"]. La Rosa Di Paracelso, 2017. She said she received insights in trance-like states and in her sleep; these were collected from her manuscripts and pamphlets by her lifelong collaborator Edward Maitland, and published posthumously in the book, Clothed with the Sun (1889).Kingsford, Anna Bonus. [http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/06-OAKM-I-Cloted-web.htm Clothed with the Sun] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170814224934/http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/06-OAKM-I-Cloted-web.htm |date=14 August 2017 }}. John M. Watkins, 1889 Subject to ill-health all her life, she died of lung disease at the age of 41, brought on by a bout of pneumonia. Her writing was virtually unknown for over 100 years after Maitland published her biography, The Life of Anna Kingsford (1896), though Helen Rappaport wrote in 2001 that her life and work are once again being studied.Rappaport, Helen. [http://www.credoreference.com/entry/abcwsr/kingsford_anna "Kingsford, Anna]," Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 2001.

For Maitland's biography, see Maitland, Edward. [https://books.google.com/books?id=2v6WtigGCB8C&pg=PA1 The Life of Anna Kingsford]. Kessinger Publishing, 2003 [first published 1896]; also available [http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/013_OAKM-I-MaitLife.htm here] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200512023749/https://search.credoreference.com/ |date=12 May 2020 }}.

Early life

Kingsford was born in Maryland Point, Stratford, now part of east London but then in Essex, to John Bonus, a wealthy merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Schröder.Maitland 1896, p. 1. Her brother John Bonus (1828–1909) was a physician and vegetarian.Pert, Alan. (2007). Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford. Books & Writers. p. 6, p. 114. {{ISBN|978-1740184052}} Her brothers Henry (1830–1903) and Albert (1831–1884) worked for their father's shipping business. Her brother Edward (1834–1908) became rector of Hulcott in Buckinghamshire and her brother Joseph (1836–1926) was a major general. Her brother Charles William Bonus (18/05/1839 – 21/11/1883) was an underwriter.{{Cite web |last=Waddell |first=R E |title=The Bonus family tree |url=https://www.ornaverum.org/family/donaldson/isabel-bonus.html |access-date=12 January 2024}}{{Cite web |last=Waddell |first=R E |title=Probate record of Charles Bonus and his wife |url=https://www.ornaverum.org/reference/pdf/146.pdf |access-date=12 January 2024}}

By all accounts a precocious child, she wrote her first poem when she was nine, and Beatrice: a Tale of the Early Christians when she was thirteen years old. Deborah Rudacille writes that Kingsford enjoyed foxhunting, until one day she reportedly had a vision of herself as the fox.Rudacille, pp. 33–34Burgess, Jennifer. [http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/kingsford1.html "Biography"], Victorian Web, accessed 30 March 2008. According to Maitland she was a "born seer," with a gift "for seeing apparitions and divining the characters and fortunes of people", something she reportedly learned to keep silent about.Maitland, Edward. The Story of Anna Kingsford, 1905, pp. 2–5.

She married her cousin, Algernon Godfrey Kingsford in 1867 when she was 21, giving birth to a daughter, Eadith, a year later. Though her husband was an Anglican priest, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1872.

In her 1868 Essay calling for female equality{{Cite web |last=Kingsford |first=Ninon |date=1868 |title=Works of Anna Kingsford |url=https://annakingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/OAKM-I-Admission.htm |access-date=13 January 2024 |website=Annakingsford.com}} she uses the pen name ‘Ninon’ and in that article references Ninon de l'Enclos (1620–1705) a French woman known for her wit, beauty, intelligence and independence. The name however may be a nod to her new status as ‘Mrs Algernon’. In a letter to Maitland in August 1873, also, signed as ‘Ninon’ she says, "much, you know is permitted to men which to women is forbidden. For this reason I usually write under some assumed name."{{Cite web |last=Maitland |first=Edward |date=1913 |title=Anna Kingsford. Her life, letters, diary and work. Chapter II |url=https://annakingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/010-OAKM-I-LifeAK/OAKM-I-Life-04-Chap2.htm |access-date=13 January 2024 |website=Annakingsford.com}}

Kingsford contributed articles to the magazine Penny Post from 1868 to 1873.{{cite book|last=Dickins|first=Gordon|title=An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire|year=1987|publisher=Shropshire Libraries|page=45|isbn=0-903802-37-6}} Having been left £700 a year by her father, she bought in 1872 The Lady's Own Paper, and took up work as its editor, which brought her into contact with some prominent women of the day, including the writer, feminist, and anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe. It was an article by Cobbe on vivisection in The Lady's Own Paper that sparked Kingsford's interest in the subject.

Studies and research

File:Edward Maitland.JPG

In 1873, Kingsford met the writer Edward Maitland, a widower, who shared her rejection of materialism. With the blessing of Kingsford's husband, the two began to collaborate, Maitland accompanying her to Paris when she decided to study medicine. Paris was at that time the center of a revolution in the study of physiology, much of it as a result of experiments on animals, particularly dogs, and mostly conducted without anaesthetic. Claude Bernard (1813–1878), described as the "father of physiology", was working there, and famously said that "the physiologist is not an ordinary man: he is a scientist, possessed and absorbed by the scientific idea he pursues. He does not hear the cries of the animals, he does not see their flowing blood, he sees nothing but his idea ..."

Walter Gratzer, professor emeritus of biochemistry at King's College London, writes that significant opposition to vivisection emerged in Victorian England, in part in revulsion at the research being conducted in France.Gratzer, Walter. Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 224. Bernard and other well-known physiologists, such as Charles Richet in France and Michael Foster in England, were strongly criticized for their work. British anti-vivisectionists infiltrated the lectures in Paris of François Magendie, Bernard's teacher, who dissected dogs without anaesthesia, allegedly shouting at them—"Tais-toi, pauvre bête!" (Shut up, you poor beast!) — while he worked. Bernard's wife, Marie-Francoise Bernard, was violently opposed to his research, though she was financing it through her dowry.Rudacille, p. 19. In the end, she divorced him and set up an anti-vivisection society. This was the atmosphere in the faculty of medicine and the teaching hospitals in Paris when Kingsford arrived, shouldering the additional burden of being a woman. Although women were allowed to study medicine in France, Rudacille writes that they were not welcomed. Kingsford wrote to her husband in 1874:

{{Quote|Things are not going well for me. My chef at the Charité strongly disapproves of women students and took this means of showing it. About a hundred men (no women except myself) went round the wards today, and when we were all assembled before him to have our names written down, he called and named all the students except me, and then closed the book. I stood forward upon this, and said quietly, "Et moi aussi, monsieur." [And me, Sir.] He turned on me sharply, and cried, "Vous, vous n'êtes ni homme ni femme; je ne veux pas inscrire votre nom." [You, you are neither man nor woman; I don't want to write your name.] I stood silent in the midst of a dead silence."Rudacille, p. 35.}}

Kingsford was distraught over the sights and sounds of the animal experiments she saw. She wrote on 20 August 1879:

{{Quote|I have found my Hell here in the Faculté de Médecine of Paris, a Hell more real and awful than any I have yet met with elsewhere, and one that fulfills all the dreams of the mediaeval monks. The idea that it was so came strongly upon me one day when I was sitting in the Musée of the school, with my head in my hands, trying vainly to shut out of my ears the piteous shrieks and cries which floated incessantly towards me up the private staircase ... Every now and then, as a scream more heart-rending than the rest reached me, the moisture burst out on my forehead and on the palms of my hands, and I prayed, "Oh God, take me out of this Hell; do not suffer me to remain in this awful place."}}

Kingsford adopted a vegetarian diet on the advice of her brother John Bonus.Forward, Charles W. (1898). [https://archive.org/details/b2486609x/page/122/mode/2up Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England]. London: Ideal Publishing Union. p. 122 She was a vice-president of the Vegetarian Society.Preece, Rod. (2011). Animal Sensibility and Inclusive Justice in the Age of Bernard Shaw. UBC Press. p. 170. {{ISBN|978-0-7748-2109-4}}

Death

Image:Anna Kingsford grave.jpg, photographed c. 1896[http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Gallery_of_Images/AKG.htm "Anna Kingsford's grave"], Anna Kingsford website, retrieved 31 March 2008.]]

Alan Pert, one of her biographers, wrote that Kingsford was caught in torrential rain in Paris in November 1886 on her way to the laboratory of Louis Pasteur, one of the most prominent vivisectionists of the period. She reportedly spent hours in wet clothing and developed pneumonia, then pulmonary tuberculosis.Pert, Alan. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070222032209/http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~apert/annakingsford/withdrawal.html "Last Years"], Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford, accessed 30 April 2011.

Pert, Alan. The Life of Anna Kingsford, 2006, pp. 156–169. She travelled to the Riviera and Italy, sometimes with Maitland, at other times with her husband, hoping in vain that a different climate would help her recover. In July 1887, she settled in London in a house she and her husband rented at 15 Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington, and waited to die, although she remained mentally active.[http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Gallery_of_Images/AKLH.htm Images of the house at 15 Wynnstay Gardens] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160330072414/http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Gallery_of_Images/AKLH.htm |date=30 March 2016 }}, Anna Kingsford website, retrieved 31 March 2008.

She died on 22 February 1888, aged 41, and was buried in the churchyard of Saint Eata's, an 11th-century church in Atcham by the River Severn, her husband's church. Her name at death is recorded as Annie Kingsford. On her marriage in Sussex in 1867, her name was given as Annie Bonus.Public record office marriage and death registers, Kew, London.

Works

=Books=

Beatrice; A Tale of the Early Christians, Joseph Masters &Son, 1863{{Cite web |title=Annakingsford.com |url=https://annakingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/OAKM-I-Beatri.htm |access-date=13 January 2024}}
An essay on the admission of women to the parliamentary franchise. Ninon Kingsford, Trubner &Co 1868{{Cite web |title=Works by Anna Kingsford, Annakingsford.com |url=https://annakingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/OAKM-I-Admission.htm |access-date=13 January 2024 |website=Annakingsford.com}}
[http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/OAKM-I-River.htm River Reeds] (volume of verse), 1866.
[https://archive.org/details/rosamundaprince00kinggoog Rosamunda the princess, and other tales]. James Parker & Co., 1875.
Kingsford, A. & Maitland, E. [https://archive.org/details/keysofcreeds00maitrich The Key of the Creeds]. Trubner, 1875.
[http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/014-OAKM-I-Astrology-web.htm Astrology Theologised], 1886.
[https://archive.org/details/healthbeautyand00kinggoog Health, Beauty and the Toilet: Letters to Ladies from a Lady Doctor]. F. Warne, 1886.
[https://archive.org/details/dreamsanddreamst05651gut Dreams and Dream Stories]. 1888.
[https://archive.org/details/clothedwithsun00kingiala Clothed with the Sun]. J. M. Watkins, 1912.
[http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/08_OAKM-I-Credo.htm The Credo of Christendom and other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070922193223/http://www.anna-kingsford.com/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/08_OAKM-I-Credo.htm |date=22 September 2007 }}. 1916.
[https://archive.org/details/perfectwayorfind00king The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ]. Watkins, 1909.
[https://archive.org/details/perfectwayindie00kinggoog The Perfect Way in Diet]. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881.
Kingsford, A. & Maitland, E. [http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/07_OAKM-I-Addr.htm Addresses & Essays On Vegetarianism]. John M Watkins, 1912.

=Chapters=

"[http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Other_Related_Works/Texts/OOR-I-Spirit/OOR-I-Spirit-015.htm Unscientific science—moral aspects of vivisection]" in Colville, W. J. Spiritual Therapeutics Or Divine Science. 1890, pp. 292–308.
"[http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/Works_by_Anna_Kingsford_and_Maitland/Texts/OAKM-I-UselessVivisec-web.htm The Uselessness of Vivisection]," 1882, in Hamilton, Susan. (ed.) Animal Welfare & Anti-vivisection 1870–1910: Nineteenth Century Woman's Mission. Taylor & Francis, 2004.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=psIT5KlLixQC&pg=PA20&dq=%22anna+kingsford%22&sig=BPqnlT6in0qP65r4686k9KiX7tA "The City of Blood"] in Forward, Stephanie. (ed.) Dreams, Visions and Realities. Continuum International, 2003.

Article

"A cast for a fortune - The holiday adventures of a Lady Doctor’" December 1877 Temple Bar magazine{{Cite web |last=Moulds |first=Alison |date=2021 |title=Victorian Popular fiction |url=https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/5-Moulds-VPFJ-vol-3-issue-1-Spring-2021-2.pdf |access-date=12 January 2024}}

References

Bibliography

Archbold, William Arthur Jobson (1900). “Kingsford, Anna,” Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, vol. 31, pp. 174-175.
Williamson, Lori (23 September 2004). “Kingsford [née Bonus], Anna [Annie] (1846–1888),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Subscription or [https://www.oxforddnb.com/help/subscribe#public UK public library membership] required.)
{{cite book|ref=Rudacille|author=Rudacille, Deborah|title=The Scalpel and the Butterfly|publisher=University of California Press|year= 2000|isbn=0520231546}}