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• Anna Kingsford – Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. Edward Maitland. Two volumes. 3rd Edition, edited
by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins,
Information: This is the
main biography of Anna Kingsford. It is written in two big volumes. The 1st
Edition is from January 1896; the “2nd Edition”, actually a reprint,
was done in the same year of 1896; the 3rd Edition, edited by Samuel
Hopgood Hart is from 1913. The quotation below, from Edward Maitland, is part of
the Preface to the Third Edition by Samuel Hopgood Hart, and it
offers a global perspective of this work, according to Edward Maitland’s
perception:
“This book is written neither for the exaltation of individuals nor for the satisfaction of mere curiosity, however legitimate; but as the necessary crown, and completion of the life and work of which it is the record, and for the sake of those who may be qualified to appreciate and to benefit by it. It is written, therefore, in fulfillment of a duty deemed paramount, and under the deepest sense of responsibility alike to the departed, the living, and those yet to come, and with scrupulous adherence to truth and accuracy even when seeming most to transcend credibility. Its object being, not to amuse or astonish, but to instruct and perpetuate, and this in respect of the profoundest and most momentous of subjects, the intrusion of any inferior element would be accounted a sacrilege. It is thus neither a romance nor an eulogium, but a history, and this of something more than of a person and a work, exceptional as these were, for it is the history also of a soul, and this a soul at once so luminous, so strong, and so slenderly veiled by its material environment as to be, in all its states and workings, accessible to observation; yet, nevertheless, a typical soul, and one the history of which may, in its broad outlines, serve as that of all souls; for a soul is one, so also is its history one. Hence the peculiar significance of the life of Anna Kingsford.” (pp. vi-vii)
