The Martyrdom of Man

<p>William Winwood Reade (1838 - 1875) was a British historian explorer and philosopher. His major work <em>The Martyrdom of Man</em> (1872) is a secular history of the Western world. According to one historian the book became a kind of substitute bible for secularists. In it Reade attempts to trace the development of Western civilization in terms analogous to those used in the natural sciences. </p><p><em>The Martyrdom of Man</em> was a history of the world from an entirely new viewpoint and was a prominent freethinking text of the late Nineteenth century. It is not an exaggeration to say that it provided a view of History as revolutionary as Darwin's view of Science - an entirely new and non-religious way of looking at the subject. It was very popular and influential on publication in the 1870's and long after - Arthur Conan Doyle H.G. Wells and George Orwell were all heavily influenced.</p>