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Edward Maitland

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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EDWARD MAITLAND (1824-1897), English humanitarian writer, was born at Ipswich on the 27th of October 1824, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James's Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived abroad, first in California and then as a commissioner of Crownlands in Australia. After his return to England in 1857 he took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to have acquired a new sense by which he was able to discern the spiritual condition of other people. He was associated with Mrs Anna Kingsford (1846-1888), the lady-doctor and supporter of vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism, who, besides being one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become a devotee of mystical theosophy; with her he brought out Keys of the Creeds (1875), The Perfect Way: or the Finding of Christ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society in 1884. After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union in 1891, and wrote her Life and Letters (1896). He died on the 2nd of October 1897.