Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development

Henry George Atkinson (c.1812–c.1890), a free thinker and supporter of naturalism, published extensively on phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism. He became acquainted with the professional writer, political activist and radical philosopher Harriet Martineau (1802–76) in the 1840s, when she attributed her recovery from a long illness to mesmerism. Their correspondence was published in 1851, and promotes a radical form of atheistic naturalism, more extreme than that found in George Combe's...