Publishing has always been central to the spreading of humanist and radical ideas, and today hundreds of pamphlets, periodicals, books, and handbills can be viewed online. Below is a growing, and non-exhaustive, list of where some of these can be found, along with links to online collections containing materials of relevance to humanist history.
Whether you’re researching a specific subject or just want to browse, there are thousands of pages waiting to be discovered online – many of them completely free. If you’re not sure where to start, why not explore the pages of Isis (1832): a weekly publication edited by Eliza Sharples, and dedicated to ‘the young women of England for generations to come, or until superstition is extinct’. For a glimpse into 19th century challenges to the blasphemy law (and the powerful defences mounted in court), take a look at the collected trials of Thomas Paterson, Thomas Finlay, and Matilda Roalfe. If you’re interested in the origins of Humanists UK, flick through the minute book of the West London Ethical Society, who believed that the good life need rely on ‘no external authority, and on no system of supernatural rewards or punishments’. And to explore how the humanist and rationalist movement flourished in the US, you could start with the first issue of The American Rationalist, published in 1956 and celebrating a nationwide union of freethinkers.