Anna Kingsford

Anna Kingsford, née Bonus (16 September 1846 – 22 February 1888), was an English anti-vivisection, vegetarian and 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, Deborah. The Scalpel and the Butterfly. University of California Press, 2000, 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. 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. Clothed with the Sun. 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. "Kingsford, Anna," Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 2001.
*For Maitland's biography, see Maitland, Edward. The Life of Anna Kingsford. Kessinger Publishing, 2003 [first published 1896]; also available here.
==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. 
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 2000, pp. 33–34.
*Also see Burgess, Jennifer. "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 twenty-one, giving birth to a daughter, Eadith, a year later. Though her husband was an Anglican priest, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1872, which he appeared not to mind. 
Kingsford contributed articles to the magazine "Penny Post" from 1868 to 1873. 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==
thumb|140px|Edward Maitland, Kingsford's collaborator and biographer
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 2000, 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:
Kingsford was distraught over the sights and sounds of the animal experiments she saw. She wrote on 20 August 1879:
==Death==
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. "Last Years", Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford, accessed April 30, 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.Images of the house at 15 Wynnstay Gardens, 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 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
*River Reeds (volume of verse), 1866.
*Rosamunda the princess, and other tales. James Parker & Co., 1875.
*Kingsford, A. & Maitland, E. The Key of the Creeds. Trubner, 1875.
*Astrology Theologised, 1886.
*Health, Beauty and the Toilet: Letters to Ladies from a Lady Doctor. F. Warne, 1886.
*Dreams and Dream Stories. 1888.
*Clothed with the Sun. J. M. Watkins, 1912.
*The Credo of Christendom and other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity. 1916.
*The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ. Watkins, 1909.
*The Perfect Way in Diet. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881.
*Kingsford, A. & Maitland, E. Addresses & Essays On Vegetarianism. John M Watkins, 1912.
;Chapters
*"Unscientific science—moral aspects of vivisection" in Colville, W. J. Spiritual Therapeutics Or Divine Science. 1890, pp. 292–308.
*"The Uselessness of Vivisection," 1882, in Hamilton, Susan. (ed.) Animal Welfare & Anti-vivisection 1870-1910: Nineteenth Century Woman's Mission. Taylor & Francis, 2004.
*"The City of Blood" in Forward, Stephanie. (ed.) Dreams, Visions and Realities. Continuum International, 2003.
==See also==
*Brown Dog affair
*Ecofeminism
*Frances Power Cobbe
*Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
*Isabelle de Steiger
*Louise Lind-af-Hageby
*Veganism
==References==
==Further reading==
*Anna Kingsford website
*"History of Vegetarianism - Anna Kingsford M.D. (1846-1888)" (International Vegetarian Union).
*
*"Theosophy and Mysticism - Anna Kingsford" (Mysterious People)
*Maitland, Edward. The story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the New Gospel of interpretation. Watkins, 1905.
*Pert, Alan. Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford. Alan Pert, 2006.
*Shirley, Ralph. Occultists & mystics of all ages. W. Rider & son, 1920.
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Category:1846 births
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Category:Animal rights advocates
Category:Animal testing in the United Kingdom
Category:Christian mystics
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
Category:Deaths from tuberculosis
Category:Ecofeminists
Category:19th-century English medical doctors
Category:English feminists
Category:English Theosophists
Category:English vegetarians
Category:English spiritual writers
Category:English novelists
Category:English poets
Category:Individuals associated with animal welfare
Category:Infectious disease deaths in England
Category:People from Essex
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Category:Women physicians
Category:1846 births
Category:1888 deaths
Category:Animal rights advocates
Category:Animal testing in the United Kingdom
Category:Christian mystics
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
Category:Deaths from tuberculosis
Category:Ecofeminists
Category:19th-century English medical doctors
Category:English feminists
Category:English Theosophists
Category:English vegetarians
Category:English spiritual writers
Category:English novelists
Category:English poets
Category:Individuals associated with animal welfare
Category:Infectious disease deaths in England
Category:People from Essex
Category:People from Kensington
Category:Women physicians
Category:1846 births
Category:1888 deaths
Category:Animal rights advocates
Category:Animal testing in the United Kingdom
Category:Christian mystics
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
Category:Deaths from tuberculosis
Category:Ecofeminists
Category:19th-century English medical doctors
Category:English feminists
Category:English Theosophists
Category:English vegetarians
Category:English spiritual writers
Category:English novelists
Category:English poets
Category:Individuals associated with animal welfare
Category:Infectious disease deaths in England
Category:People from Essex
Category:People from Kensington
Category:Women physicians