Böcker av Moncure Daniel Conway

Conway's two-volume biography of revolutionary author Thomas Paine (1737-1809) did much to inspire a reassessment of Paine's importance in the 'age of revolutions'. Paine's political pamphlets influenced the American Declaration of Independence, and he was later a member of the French Convention, voting against the execution of Louis XVI.

Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907), the son of a Virginian plantation-owner, became a Unitarian minister but his anti-slavery views made him controversial. He later became a freethinker, and following the outbreak of the Civil War, which deeply divided his own family, he left the United States for England in 1863. He gained a reputation as the 'least orthodox preacher in London', and was acquainted with many figures in the literary and scientific world, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin. This memoir of Thomas Carlyle, another friend, was published in 1881 soon after Carlyle's death. Carlyle had not wanted to be the subject of a biography, and reluctantly authorised J. A. Froude to write one, but Conway rushed into print this somewhat hagiographical account because he was concerned, with reason, about the damage Froude's frank biography (published in 1882-4 and also reissued in this series) might do to Carlyle's reputation.

This two-volume work from 1879 is a comprehensive study of demon mythology by freethinker and writer Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907). In Volume 1, Conway classifies types of demon, and argues that the various types are personifications of the main obstacles to 'primitive man,' such as hunger and disease.

Conway's 1904 Autobiography is a fascinating account of the life and work of an American proponent of anti-slavery, free religion, social reform and women's suffrage. Depicting the age and its foremost thinkers, it features the author's friendships with such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle.

Moncure Conway (1832-1907) was born on his family's plantation in Virginia, but became a committed abolitionist soon after he left college. He joined abolitionist rallies and moved from Methodism to the Unitarian ministry, eventually becoming a freethinker. Conway became increasingly isolated from his family as a result of his abolitionist activism, his marriage to an abolitionist, and the resettling of a group of his father's escaped slaves in Ohio during the civil war. This book was published in 1865, soon after he settled in Britain, where he lived for over 30 years, became a supporter of women's suffrage, and networked with intellectuals including Dickens, Carlyle, Lyell and Darwin. His description of the injustices of slavery, including the slave trading in the southern plantations that triggered the secession of southern states and the civil war, is set in the context of his personal experiences and his evolving ethical views.