Skip to content
Curated category

19th-century atheists

  • Friedrich NietzscheOn the 3rd of January 1889, in the streets of Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche caused a public disturbance and two policemen approached him.
  • Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was drowned in a storm off the Italian coast on the 8th of July 1822, age 29, before most of the world had ever read a word he wrote.
  • Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf walked into the River Ouse on the 28th of March 1941, her pockets weighted with stones. She had just finished her last novel, Between the…
  • Karl MarxOn the 14th of March 1883, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, Friedrich Engels left Karl Marx alone in his armchair for scarcely two minutes.
  • Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was born on the 28th of November 1820 in Barmen, a Prussian industrial town his contemporaries called the "German Manchester".
  • Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man the world would come to know as Vladimir Lenin, took the name from no person at all. He first used it in December 1901, and…
  • Mikhail BakuninMikhail Bakunin spent three years chained in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, alone in a cell, with no certainty he would ever leave alive.
  • Vissarion BelinskyVissarion Belinsky died on the eve of his arrest. The Tsar's police were coming for him on account of his political views, but consumption took him first in…
  • Peter KropotkinPeter Kropotkin was born in Moscow on the 9th of December 1842, in the Konyushennaya district, which translates as the Equerries district.
  • Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell was born on the 18th of May 1872 in a country house called Ravenscroft, in Trellech, Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent liberal…
  • Vinayak Damodar SavarkarVinayak Damodar Savarkar died on the 26th of February 1966 at his residence in Bombay, having renounced food, water, and medicine twenty-five days earlier.
  • Jane Ellen HarrisonJane Ellen Harrison once lectured on Athenian gravestones in Glasgow, and 1,600 people turned up to hear her speak. That is a striking turnout for a talk…
  • Harriet MartineauHarriet Martineau was born on the 12th of June 1802 in Norwich, England, the sixth of eight children in a Unitarian family of French Huguenot ancestry.