Joseph Mazzini Wheeler

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Joseph Mazzini Wheeler (24 January 1850 – 5 May 1898) was an English atheist and freethought writer.

Reproduction of photograph of Joseph Mazzini Wheeler (published in the Freethinker, 1893)

Biography[edit]

Wheeler was born in London. He briefly worked as a lithographer in Edinburgh.[1] He became an atheist after reading the works of Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.[2] In 1868, he met George William Foote and they became lifelong friends.[1] Wheeler worked as an editor for Foote's Freethinker journal. He was strongly anti-Christian.[1]

His most well known work was A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages (1889).[1] He was vice-President of the National Secular Society.[3]

Wheeler suffered from a mental breakdown and died in an asylum in 1898.[4]

Publications[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Flynn, Tom. (2007). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Prometheus Books. p. 815. ISBN 978-1-59102-391-3
  2. ^ Royle, Edward. (1980). Radicals, Secularists, and Republicans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866-1915. Manchester University Press. p. 704. ISBN 0-7190-0783-6
  3. ^ "Joseph Mazzini Wheeler". Freedom From Religion Foundation.
  4. ^ Stein, Gordon. (1880). An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism. Prometheus Books. p. 334

Further reading[edit]

  • John Edwin McGee. (1948). A History of the British Secular Movement. Haldeman-Julius Publications.

External links[edit]