Maitland, Edward (1824-1897)

Co-founder with Anna Bonus Kingsford of Esoteric Christianity and the Hermetic Society.

Born October 27, 1824, at Ipswich, England, Maitland graduated from Caius College, Cambridge, 1847. He intended to become a clergyman, but had many reservations about the church, and instead spent some years traveling in California and Australia, studying life firsthand.

Upon returning to England, he devoted himself "to developing the intuitional faculty as to find the solution of all problems having their basis in man's spiritual nature." Through his close friendship with Anna Kingsford, he became an ardent vegetarian and the interpreter of her highly individual mystical Christianity. He collaborated with her on the writing of The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ (London, 1882) and related books.

After Kingsford's death in 1888, Maitland published her biography, Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary (1896). He died in the following year on October 2, 1897.

Sources:

Kingsford, Anna. Clothed with the Sun. London: John M. Watkins, 1889.

Kingsford, Anna, and Edward Maitland. The Perfect Way; or, The Finding of Christ. London, 1882. Rev. ed. London, 1887. Reprint, Mokelumne Hill, Calif.: Health Research, 1972. Reprint, Boston: Esoteric Book, 1988.

——. The Virgin of the World. 1885. Reprint, Minneapolis: Wizard's Bookshelf, 1977.

Maitland, Edward. Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary. London, 1896.

——. The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the New Gospel of Interpretation. Birmingham, England: Ruskin Press, 1905.