Henry Stephens Salt | |
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| Born | Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt 20 September 1851 |
| Died | 19 April 1939 (aged 87) Brighton, England |
| Citizenship | British |
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| Notable work | Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892) |
| Spouses | Catherine (Kate) Leigh Joynes
(m. 1879; died 1919)Catherine Mandeville
(m. 1927) |
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Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt (/sɔːlt, sɒlt/; 20 September 1851 – 19 April 1939) was a British writer and campaigner for social reform in the fields of prisons, schools, economic institutions, and the treatment of animals. He was a noted ethical vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist, socialist, and pacifist, and was well known as a literary critic, biographer, classical scholar and naturalist. It was Salt who first introduced Mohandas Gandhi to the influential works of Henry David Thoreau, and influenced Gandhi's study of vegetarianism.[1][2] Salt is considered, by some, to be the "father of animal rights",[3] having been one of the first writers to argue explicitly in favour of animal rights, rather than just improvements to animal welfare, in his book Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892).
- ^ "My faith in vegetarianism grew on me from day to day. Salt's book Plea for Vegetarianism whetted my appetite for dietetic studies. I went in for all books available on vegetarianism and read them". Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, chapter XV.
- ^ Ashe, Geoffrey. Gandhi, a Biography. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000
- ^ "Henry Salt - the father of animal rights". International Vegetarian Union. Retrieved 15 June 2020.