A Group of Unpublished Letters by Henry S. Salt to Joseph Ishill. With an appreciation by Henry W. Nevinson.
Limited to 50 copies. "I still cannot decide for which of [Henry S. Salt's] unpopular causes I admire him most for his denunciations of flesh-eating, of 'blood-sports,' of vivisection, of furs and feathers in dress, of the use of pit ponies, of flogging, of prison treatment, of war, of the desecration of mountains for 'profit.' " Letters written from Nov. 3, 1923, to Jan. 10, 1935. [Back]

A Plea for Vegetarianism and Oher Essays
Nine essays giving insight into reactions to vegetarians, with suggestions how vegetarians should respond. (1) "A Plea for Vegetarianism," 7-20. The essay, picked up by Mahatma Gandhi in a vegetarian restaurant in London, had a profound influence on him. (2) "Morality in Diet," 21-3. (3) "Good Taste in Diet," 31-9. (4) "Some Results of Food Reform," 40-7. (5) "Medical Men and Food Reform," 48-55. (6) "Sir Henry Thompson on Diet," 56-72. (7) "On Certain Fallacies," 73-91. (8) "The Philosophy of Cannibalism," 102-110. (9) "Vegetarianism and Social Reforms," 111-15. [Back]

Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, by Henry David Thoreau
Introductory note.--Civil disobedience.--A plea for Captain John Brown.--The last days of John Brown.--Paradise (to be) regained.--Life without principle. [Back]

Company I Have Kept
Salt's "Company" includes not humans only, but animals, wild flowers, and mountains. The reader is introduced, for instance, to the Shrewsbury of the 'fifties, to Eton and Cambridge of the two succeeding decades, to the early socialist awakening and the lighter side of the humanitarian campaign, which shows the writer in affable conflict with his Savages. Many well known names figure in the book: Ruskin, Meredith, W. H. Hudson, Gandhi, Edward Carpenter, Bernard Shaw, H. M. Hyndman, Prince Kropotkin. [Back]

Cruelties of Civilization: A Program of Humane Reform
Reprints of Humanitarian League publications, each essay separately paginated. Salt defines humanitarianism as the study and practice of compassion, love, gentleness, justice, and universal benevolence applicable to all sentient beings, human and nonhuman. Draws a sharp distinction between humanitarianism and a "sentimentality view" or a "be kind to humans and animals" view. Volume I applies to humans: punishment and prison reform, economic discrimination against women, humanising the poor laws, protection of children, aged, sick, insane. Volume II is on animals. Two essays against harmful experiments on animals ("Medical science: The true method and the false" by Edward Carpenter; (hunting) by Florence Dixie (who once was an avid hunter). "Royal sport" (vivid description of and sharp attack on the Queen's Buckhounds and stag hunting - the hunting (?) of tame deer from Windsor Park) by J. Stratton. "Rabbit coursing" by R. H. Jude. "The extermination of birds" (use of feathers in millinery, hunting, robbing birds' nests. caging) by Edith Carrington. "The horse" (service to civilisation, abuses, disposal of) by B. Coulson. "Cattle ships" (imports from Ireland and America, abuses in loading and transporting, lack of food and water, injuries) by Isabella M. Greg and S. H. Towers. "Behind the scenes in slaughter-houses" by H. F. Lester. Volumes III contains two important essays by Salt: (1) "The humanities of diet," 22 pp. Principle and purpose of vegetarianism, misconceptions of vegetarianism, slaughter-house horrors, aesthetic considerations. (2) "Literae humaniores: An appeal to teachers," 32 pp. The need for humane education; pets, collecting insects, blood-sports, flesh-food; what teachers can do. [Back]

Cvm Grano, Verses and Epigrams
Edition limited to 470 copies, of which 350 were printed on Canterbury laid, and 120 on Strathmore Wayside-text laid; only 420 copies for sale. [Back]

De Quincey
Presents the chief features of De Quincey's character in a more harmonious, more sympathetic, aspect than that in which he is commonly regarded, including illustrations. Chapters: (1) Preface, (2) De Quincey's Life, (3) His Works, (4) Characteristcs of his Writings, (5) The Confessions of an Opium-Eater, (6) Bibliographical List. [Back]

Flesh or Fruit? An Essay on Food Reform
Discusses the literature of vegetarianism, including that by Seneca, Plutarch, Porphyry, Wesley, Montaigne, Sylvester Graham, Anna Kingsford. The vegetarian diet is advantageous in that it is necessary in order to be consistently humane, is aesthetically in good taste, is healthful, is economic. Criticises objectors to vegetarianism who use the argument form physiology (humans' canine teeth), who claim vegetarianism violates the laws of nature (predator and prey), who say some people who have tried vegetarianism have failed to stick with it, who ask what will we do for leather, soap, candles, who claim that eating animals is in the animals' interests. [Back]

The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues
Arguments for vegetarianism: moral, scientific, economic, health, social, and aesthetic. Amazingly comprehensive, devastating critiques of 31 anti-vegetarian arguments (some so silly they are humorous, but many of these arguments still in use). The arguments or claims made by opponents of vegetarianism: (1) Consuming eggs and diary products contradicts the meaning of "vegetarian." (2) There is no difference between roasting an ox and boiling an egg. (3) Vegetarians who do not immediately and completely shun all animal products are hypocrites. (4) No great empires (Roman, British) were ever founded by vegetarians. (5) Human canine teeth prove the necessity of flesh-eating. (6) The human stomach is much different than that of true herbivore. (7) History shows that humans are omnivorous. (8) Vegetarianism is contrary to the laws of nature, red in tooth and claw; to kill is natural. (9) It is necessary to destroy life in order to live. (10) Raising food animals in pleasant conditions and killing them painlessly is not cruel. (11) Eating animals is no worse than using them for labour. (12) The rapid death of food animals is preferable to the agonising death of humans. (13) Food animals, free of the fears and dangers experienced by wild animals, are happier. (14) It is better for animals that we use them for food than that they do not exist at all. (15) Vegetarians who eat eggs and diary products are inconsistent. (16) Consistent vegetarians could never kill lice or germs. (17) Flesh-eating is just as aesthitic as vegetarianism. (18) Vegetarians are sentimentalists. (19) Meat eating is necessary for strength. (20) Flesh-food is easier digested than vegetarian food. (21) Flesh diet is necessary in cold climates ("What would become of Eskimoes if all became vegetarians?"). (22) What difference does it make whether we eat flesh or non-flesh, so long as the spirit in which we eat be a proper one? (23) Vegetarianism is economically impractical. (24) Vegetarianism is an inconvenient diet. (25) Eating flesh is necessary for developing a manly spirit. (26) How could we exist without leather? Soup? Candles? (27) How could land be fertilised without manure from food animals? (28) If the life of animals be regarded as sacred as human life, civilisation will revert to a primitive condition. (29) If we turn loose all the food animals they will over-populate, overrun the land, starve, lie dead on highways and in the suburbs. (30) We were given permission by God to eat animals. (31) Vegetarians do not give sufficient priority to more important social reforms (war, poverty, etc.). [Back]

Killing for Sport: Essays by Various Writers
Preface by G. B. Shaw. Covers hunting, including hunting of carted deer, rabbit coursing, pigeon shooting, trapping, and fishing, in relation to cruelty (G. Greenwood, 1-33), agriculture (E. Carpenter, 33-34), cost (M. Adams, 45-59), game laws (J. Connell, 69-84), economics (W. H. S. Monck, 60-8), destruction of wildlife (E. B. Lloyd, 85-94), fox hunting (H. B. M. Watson, 95-100), big-game hunting (E. Bell, 101-15), blood sports at schools ("by an old Etonian," apparently H. S. Salt), 116-29. In H. S. Salt's important essay "Sportsmen's fallacies," 130-46, he analyses and critiques 13 sophisms used by hunters who claim that hunting is justified because: (1) hunters have a God-given instinct to hunt; (2) animals hunt other animals; (3) it is necessary to control animal populations; (4) it adds to the national food supply; (5) it helps the economy; (6) it develops courage, manliness, virility; (7) hunters enjoy it; (8) the hunted enjoy it; (9) the animals would rather live a happy life and be shot rather than not exist at all; (10) hunters save species from extinction; (11) hunters, because of extensive hunting experience, are specialists who know more about the issue of hunting than do its critics; (12) death from hunting is less painful than natural death; (13) shooting a predator eliminates the suffering the prey would otherwise have experienced. [Back]

Kith and Kin: Poems of Animal Life
Selection of 85 poems, some abridged, reflecting kinship of humans and animals. 56 writers, including W. Blake, E. B. Browning, R. Burns, Lord Byron, S. T. Coleridge, W. Cowper, O. Goldsmith, L. Hunt, J. Keats, H. W. Longfellow, A. Pope, P. B. Shelley, R. Southey, H. D. Thoreau, W. Whitman, W. Wordsworth. "Where the non-human races are concerned - birds perhaps excepted - the treatment of animals in verse has been almost as bad as their treatment in actual life." [Back]

Literary Sketches
Essays from various magazines with a few slight additions and modifications. (1) Two Kinds of Genius, (2) Shelley as a Teacher, (3) The Tennysonian Philosophy, (4) The Words of James Thomson ("B.V"), (5) On Certain Poets, and Their Critics, (6) Edgar Poe's Writings, (7) Henry David Thoreau, (8) William Godwin, (9) Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances, (10) Some thoughts on De Quincey. [Back]

Memories of Bygone Eton
Salt fondly recalling his time at Eton College, both as a King's Scholar and later as an Assistant Master. There are over thirty chapters, including: Confessions of an Eton Master, Socialism Reproved, A Tourist's Adventure, Hornby the Hermit, The Bogus Solomon, In Praise of the "Crib", William Johnson, Swinburne's Tutor, A Rough Diamond. There are also fourteen illustrations, including: DR. J. J. Hornby, Rev. J. L. Joynes, C. Kegan Paul, Henry George, Edward Carpenter and Sir George Greenwood. [Back]

On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scawfell
A little study of the hills of Carnarvonshire and Cumberland, an expression of the emotions that our mountains can inspire. A plea for the preservation of Snowdon and other mountain "sanctuaries," before they are utterly disfigured. Contents: (1) Pilgrims of the Mountain, (2) At the Shrine of Snowdon, (3) At the Shrine of Scafell, (4) Pleasures of the Heights, (5) Wild Life, (6) The Barren Hillside, (7) Slag-Heap or Sanctary? [Back]

Percy Bysshe Shelley Poet and Pioneer: A Biographical Study
Based on Salt's Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Monograph and Shelley's Principles [Back]

Salt and His Circle by Stephen Winsten
Winsten borrowed Salt's papers from Mrs Catherine Salt and then did not return them (it is believed he sold them without Mrs Salt's knowledge or concent). Winsten, then, had unique material - and was a friend of Shaw's and was able to get information from that source - but did not date the letters or events and at times he invents dialogue. According to Shaw, Winsten as a biographer "is inaccurate as to facts, wrong in his judgements, self-complacent and without humour..." How much, if any, of this book is true is open to question. Not recommended. [Back]

Selected Prose Works of Shelley
Note: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited.
The necessity of atheism -- A letter to Lord Ellenborough -- A refutation of deism -- A defence of poetry -- Essay on the literature, the arts, and the manners of the Athenians -- On life -- On a future state -- Essay on Christianity. [Back]

Seventy Years Among Savages
A book of reminiscences, criticising English life and customs from the humanitarian point of view. Henry Salt's autobiography in which "The seventy years spent by me among (friendly) savages form the subject of this story, but not, be it noted, seventy years of consciousness that my life was so cast, for during the first part of my residence in the strange land where I was born, the dreadful reality of my surroundings was hardly suspected by me..." The book deals with incidents which had a real significance on his life. Contents: (1) The Argument, (2) Where Ignorance Was Bliss, (3) Literæ Inhumaniores, (4) The Discovery, (5) Cannibal's Conscience, (6) Glimpses of Civilization, (7) The Poet-Pioneer, (8) Voices Crying in the Wilderness, (9) A League of Humaness, (10) Twentieth-Century Tortures, (11) Hunnish Sports and Fashions, (12) A Faddist's Divisions, (13) A Faddist's Diversions, (14) Hoof-Marks of the Vandal, (15) The Forlorn Hope, (16) The Cave-Man Re-Emerges, (17) Poety of Death and Love, (18) The Talisman. [Back]

Socialism and Literature
Forecasts of the Coming Century By a Decade of Writers edited by E. Carpenter (On spine)
The socialist ideal in art, by W. Morris, and Socialism and literature, by H. S. Salt, are reprinted from the New Review of January 1891.
Contents: Re-occupation of the land, by Alfred Russel Wallace.--Trade unionism and co-operation, by T. Mann.--Programme for a socialist parliament, by H. R. Smart.--The socialist ideal in art, by W. Morris.--Socialism and literature, by H. S. Salt.--A century of women's rights, by Enid Stacy.--Means and ends in education, by Margaret McMillan.--Natural inequality, by G. Allen.--Illusions of socialism, by B. Shaw.--Transitions to freedom, by E. Carpenter. [Back]
Hand and Brain: A Symposium of Essays on Socialism by William Morris and others - 720 Copies
The socialist idea in art, by W. Morris.--Re-occupation of the land, by A. R. Wallace.--Socialism and literature, by H. S. Salt.--Natural inequality, by G. Allen.--The illusions of socialism, by B. Shaw.--Transitions to freedom, by E. Carpenter. [Back]

Songs of Freedom
A collection of English and American poems illustrative of the growth of the revolutionary ideal - national, social and intellectual - during the past hundred years. Arranged in such a manner as to make it a record of the men no less than of the movement, of freedom's singers as well as of freedom's songs. Contents Part 1: Robert Burns, William Cowper, George Crabbe, William Blake, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Campbell, James Hogg, Thomas Moore, Edward Lysaght, Lord Bryon, John Keats, James Henry Leigh Hunt, Percy Bysse Shelley, Felicia Hemans, James Montgomery, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Contents Part 2: Ebenezer Elliott, Anonymous ("Union Hymm"), Michael Thomas Sadler, Robert Nicoll, William Johnson Fox, Harriet Martineau, Thomas Wade, T. Noel, Ebenezer Jones, The Hon. George Sydney Smythe, Wathen Mark Wilks Call, Thomas Cooper, J. A. Leatherland, Charles Mackay, John Jeffrey, Charles Kingsley, Ernest Jones, Gerald Massey, Mary Howitt, Thomas Live Peacock, Robert Barnabas Brough, William James Linton, William Savage Landor, Robert Browning, William Allingham, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Bronte, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth M. Chandler, John Pierpont, Henry W. Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Edmond H. Sears, John Kells Ingram, Thomas Osborne Davis, J. De Jean Fraser, James Clarence Mangan, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Richard Dalton Williams, "Sliabh Cuilinn" (nom-de-plume). Contents Part 3: Walt Whitman, W. C. Bennett, James Thomson ("B.V."), Joaquin Miller, John Bedford Leno, Edward H. Guillaume, Robert Buchanan, The Hon. Roden Noel, John Boyle O'Reilly, John Addington Symonds, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, John Stuart Blackie, Eric Mackay, H. E. Clarke, William Shearer-Aitken, Robert Bird, Timothy D. Sullivan, Michael Scanlan, Ernest Bilton, Edith Bland ("E. Nesbit"), James Leigh Joynes, Fred Henderson, Walter Crane, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, James Jeffery Roche, Francis A. Fahy, Fanny Parnell, John Barlas, Sidney Oliver, William Morris, Francis W. L. Adamsm, Edward Carpenter. [Back]

The Creed of Kinship
Brief, clear overview of humanitarian, based on kinship view of evolved life forms, with consideration of war, poverty, women's rights, prison reform, theory of punishment, flogging, animal rights, experiments on animals, vegetarianism, hunting, fishing. Shows Salt's humanitarian vitally concerned with both humans and animals, human rights and animal rights. [Back]

The Flogging Craze: A Statement of the Case Against Corporal Punishment
(Forward by Sir George Greenwood)
I. The revolt against flogging.--2. The flogging of juveniles.--3. The flogging of adults.--4. The lash as purifier.--5. The lash as a deterrent.--6. Fallacies of flagellants.--7. Revenge or reclamation?--Appendix. A flogging with the cat-o'-nine tails. [Back]

Others Publications

The Rights of Animals
Argues for the rights of animals to live their own lives as individuals with own purposes and value. Emphasises direct duties of humans to animals. The kinship of humans and animals as evidenced by evolution is basic to ethics. A matter if justice: treat an animal is such a manner as you would willingly be treated, were you the animal. Discusses implications for animals used for labour, food, experimentation, sports. Agrues against D. G. Ritchie's denial of animal rights. [Back]

A Lover of Animals
Humourous, short play portraying different interpretations of "lover of animals" through interaction of surgeon, hunter, pet lover, vegetarian, and butcher. A critique of animal experimentation implicit. [Back]

Restrictionists and Abolitionists
In regard to animal experimentation, using animals for food, and hunting, a plea for restrictionism and abolitionism as the wiser policy, rather than restrictionism or abolitionism. "... The acceptance or refusal of compromise...is a matter of policy, not principle..." Restrictionists and abolitionists should regard each other not as rivals but as allies. One and the same individual, one and the same organisation can advocate both restriction and abolition. Take all the good we can get, while forever aspiring to something more. It is sometimes more noble and difficult to be willing to accept the humblest installment of reform. [Back]

Have Animals Rights?
This essay shows "Humanitarian" as author, but surely it is Salt. We should use the expression "man and the other animals." instead of "man and the animals." An animal has its own individuality and life to live as surely as a human has. We claim for animals and humans a measure of individuality and freedom, a space in which to live their own lives - rights. If humans have rights, animals have them also. Treat the animal in such a manner as you would willingly be treated, were you such an animal. Simple justice is required. [Back]

What is Humanitarianism?
Discusses what humanitarianism is and what it is not. Emphasises rights of both humans and animals. It is iniquitous to inflict avoidable suffering on any sentient being. Humanitarianism is not a "be kind to sentient beings" view or a sentimental view. [Back]

Pertaining To Thoreau
Broadside, 8 x 5 1/2 inches. First separate printing of Salt's review of Jones' book, from the Fortnightly Review. Jones' book was published in a very small edition in 1901 (225 copies according to a prospectus, but a letter from Hill indicates that the binder ruined a number of copies). [Back]

Note: Much of the details on this page are taken from Charles R. Magel's Keyguide to Information Sources in Animal Rights (an important source for anyone researching animal rights).

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