William Winwood Reade

William Winwood Reade FRGS
Born	1838
Died	1875
Residence	Conservative Club, SW
Occupation	historian explorer philosopher
Society Membership membership ASL ordinary fellow - life compounder ASL Local Secretary for New York 1866.11.20 ASL Foundation Fellow left 1870.12.06 resigned elected_ASL 1863 clubs Conservative Club societies Royal Geographical Society Geographical Society of Paris

Notes

Office Notes

ASL Council 1863 [new July] Member [1st list] [2nd list]
ASL Council 1864 Member

House Notes

9 jun 1863: Resolved, on the motion of Dr Hunt, seconded by Mr Blake, Winwood Reade Esq. was elected a member of Council.
presents gorilla skin to the Society
A4:42 discusses Pim's lecture The Negro at home and abroad
1868.04.14 Mr W. Winwood Read was appointed Visiting Secretary to West Africa on the same terms as Mr Charlesworth appointment as regards the introduction of new Members.
In A31/2/2 'Conservative Club' address crossed out
See Presidential Address 1866 p. lxxiii for note of reaction to his paper

Corr. mem. Geographical Society of Paris

Notes From Elsewhere

William Winwood Reade (1838 - 1875) was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher.

Traveller, journalist and novelist. Born in Oxfordshire and educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (1856), though he did not take a degree. He was a nephew of the novelist Charles Reade, and made some efforts to write novels himself. After Du Chaillu’s controversial reports of the Gorilla, he travelled to The Gaboon in 1861 to search for it, then on to Angola and the Cameroons, but he did not find it. This trip is described in his book Savage Africa (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1864). He returned to West Africa in 1869 on behalf of the RGS, and later covered the Ashanti War of 1873 as a newspaper correspondent. He went on to write several other novels, travelogues and attacks on religion. Isabel tried to convert him as he was dying: “During all the month of April I was very sad about Winwood Reade, who was living, or rather dying, alone in a wretched little room at the top of a house. I used to go and see him every day and try and cheer him, and take him anything I fancied he could touch. I asked him if money could be of any use to him, but he told me he had quite enough to last him for the time he had to live. What distressed me the most of all, was the state he was dying in, which to me was dreadful, because he said he had no belief, and it seemed true. Of course it was useless—it was no business of mine; but I could not help doing my best during the last fortnight of his life to induce him to believe in God, and to be sorry before he died.”[
Burton had been on friendly terms with Reade since 1864, when they met in England, and frequently refers to him in his books and in his correspondence.[196] Reade missed meeting him at Fernando Po in 1862 “I was disappointed of an interview with Richard Burton, who was up the Cameroons, a volcanic mountain as high as the Peak of Teneriffe. However, during the few days which I spent at Fernando Po, I was located at his house, and had at my disposal a library of which the profound and varied nature was an index to that great mind.”[197] In Two Trips to Gorilla Land, Burton lauds Reade: “I deplore his loss. The highest type of Englishman, brave and fearless as he was gentle and loving, his short life of thirty-seven years shows how much may be done by the honest, thorough worker. He had emphatically the courage of his opinions, and he towered a cubit above the crowd by telling not only the truth, as most of us do, but the whole truth, which so few can afford to do. His personal courage in battle during the Ashanti campaign, where the author of ‘Savage Africa’ became correspondent of the ‘Times,’ is a matter of history. His noble candour in publishing the ‘Martyrdom of Man’ is an example and a model to us who survive him. And he died calmly and courageously as he lived, died in harness, died as he had resolved to die, like the good and gallant gentleman of ancient lineage that he was.” There are annotated copies of Savage Africa and The Martyrdom of Man in Burton’s personal library

Publications

External Publications

His two best-known books, The Martyrdom of Man (1872) and The Outcast (1875), were included in the Thinker's Library.

The African sketch book. 2 vols

House Publications

On the influence of Christian missionaries amongst savages