William Winwood Reade

From Philosopedia

Reade, William Winwood (1838–1875)

Reade, a nephew of the novelist Charles Reade, was an English traveler and writer. Born to a squire in Scotland, he studied at Oxford, then journeyed to Africa, writing Savage Africa (1863), The African Sketch Book (1873), and The Story of Ashantee Campaign, which event he accompanied as a Times correspondent.

In the Martyrdom of Man (1872), Reade rejects the doctrine of a personal creator—the work enjoyed eighteen editions. It surveyed ancient and medieval history, telling of the growth of religion from savage beginnings and leading up to a definitely anti-theistic presentation of the future of human life with the claim to have shown “that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the interests of civilization.”

His last work, The Outcast, was a freethought novel that describes the harsh experiences of a skeptic who had rejected Christianity and any belief in a future life.

Joseph McCabe states that although in the Dictionary of National Biography Reade is described as an atheist, actually he was an agnostic of the Spencerian school, one who recognized God as “the First Cause and Inscrutable Mystery.”

His obituary, written by Charles Reade in the London Daily Telegraph, included, “He wrote his last work, The Outcast, with the hand of death upon him. Two zealous friends carried him out to Wimbledon, and there, for a day or two, the air seemed to revive him; but on Friday night he began to sink, and on Saturday afternoon died in the arms of his beloved uncle, Mr. Charles Reade.”

Reade - a social Darwinist and atheist - not only rejected belief in immortality but also he regarded it as making many men and women, and even nations, “spiritual prisoners of the Shadow of Death, even while living.”

Moncure D. Conway, at the gravesite, said that Read “warned these life-long victims that the only victory over death is to concentrate themselves on life.”

In The Veil of Isis, or Mysteries of the Druids (1861), Reade expressed some views about the Druids which later have been disproved. The construction of Stonehenge, for example, preceded the historical Celts by centuries.

In 1873, Reade served as a correspondent in the Ashanti War, dying soon afterwards. He is buried in Ipsden churchyard, Oxfordshire.

{BDF; FUK; FUS; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE; TRI}