Herbert Spencer

Beatrice Potter (later BW ) underwent a religious crisis in late adolescence; she experienced a short-lived conversion to traditional Anglican Christianity in 1875. After that she returned to looking for alternatives—Buddhism and other Eastern religions...

She was baptised into the Church of England but while she lived with them attended, as they did, several different Baptist chapels. CN later became a student of science and a sceptic in matters of...

Beatrice said she was the least favoured of the Potter girls, and had little education. There is disagreement among biographers as to how far she shared her sisters' tuition by resident governesses in a wide...

The close relationship of Marian Evans (later GE ) with Herbert Spencer came to an end after it became clear that he was not interested in intimacy.

Lewes was married. He and his wife had agreed as rational free-thinkers that monogamy was unnatural. He had thus tolerated her relationship with his friend Thornton Hunt , and supported her children by Hunt, who...

They made a friend of George Meredith some time before 1890 and visited him often. (When he sent them a signed copy of Modern Love, they were inspired to dance a Dionysic dance...

The Shirreffs were a sociable family whose friends and acquaintances were varied. The scientist Mary Somerville , geologist Sir Charles Lyell , and Sir William Grove , inventor of the Grove battery, were numbered among...

She had, however, a delight in meeting and observing people with cultural capital. Other acquaintances included James Anthony Froude , writer; Jane, Lady Franklin (widow of the Arctic explorer, and a traveller in her own...

Bertram was the first Freethinker Schreiner had encountered, and he strongly influenced her life, although she knew him for only three days. He lent her a copy of Herbert Spencer 's First Principles. Spencer's...

Their closest friends were statesman R. B. Haldane , Labour leader Arthur Henderson , Liberal politician Herbert Samuel , G. B. Shaw , and political psychologist Graham Wallas , the last two both Fabians. They...

ES 's circle of friends included Sir William Grove (inventor of the Grove battery), scientist Mary Somerville , lawyer and Royal Society president Lord Wrottesley , astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy , Sir John Herschel

FPC 's wide London circle included Walter Bagehot , Frances Sarah Colenso and her husband Bishop Colenso (while they were home from Africa), Henry Fawcett , Charles Kingsley , W. E. H. Lecky , Sir Charles Lyell

MBE set a great deal of store by meeting men distinguished as authors or in other fields, as a spur to literary achievement of her own. She was given to boasting of her acquaintance with...

By this year LSB had met and grown quite close to the social scientist and founder of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer . This became one of the longest and most influential friendships of her life.

While in India CN contracted a serious fever, which kept [her] a prisoner for seven weeks. She had been ill before this, and had been barred from scientific studies for some weeks by a...