WCarl Christian Clemen, best known as Carl Clemen, was a German theologian and religious historian. He was a member of the history of religions school.
WEdward Clodd was an English banker, writer and anthropologist. He had a great variety of literary and scientific friends, who periodically met at Whitsunday gatherings at his home at Aldeburgh in Suffolk.
WWilliam Emmette Coleman, also known as W. E. Coleman, was an American clerk, Orientalist, spiritualist and writer.
WMoncure Daniel Conway was an American abolitionist minister. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, the radical writer descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia and Maryland but spent most of the final four decades of his life abroad in England and France, where he wrote biographies of Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Paine and his own autobiography. He led freethinkers in London's South Place Chapel, now Conway Hall.
WElliott Ladd Coues was an American army surgeon, historian, ornithologist, and author. He led surveys of the Arizona Territory, and later as secretary of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. He founded the American Ornithological Union in 1883, and was editor of its publication, The Auk.
WLyon Sprague de Camp was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
WHenry Ridgely Evans (1861–1949) was an American amateur magician and magic historian.
WGeorge William Foote was an English secularist, freethinker, republican, writer and journal editor.
WFydell Edmund Garrett (1865–1907), also known as Edmund Garrett, was a British publicist, journalist and poet. He was returned as a Member of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope in 1898 for Victoria East constituency.
WRené (Jean-Marie-Joseph) Guénon, was a French author, Traditionalist, and perennial philosopher who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics having written on topics ranging from “sacred science”, and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation.
WFriedrich Konrad Eduard Wilhelm Ludwig Klages was a German philosopher, psychologist, graphologist, poet, writer, and lecturer, who was a two-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the Germanic world, he is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. He began his career as a research chemist according to his family's wishes, though soon returned to his passions for poetry, philosophy and classical studies. He held a post at the University of Munich, where in 1905 he founded the Psychodiagnostisches Seminar; the latter was forced to close in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. In 1915, Klages moved to neutral Switzerland, where over the following decades much of his mature philosophical works were written. Klages died in 1956.
WJohn Nevil Maskelyne was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet, along with other Victorian-era devices. He worked with magicians George Alfred Cooke and David Devant, and many of his illusions are still performed today. His book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill is considered a classic overview of card sharp practices.In 1914 he founded the Occult Committee, a group to "investigate claims to supernatural power and to expose fraud".
WJoseph Martin McCabe was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life. He was "one of the great mouthpieces of freethought in England". Becoming a critic of the Catholic Church, McCabe joined groups such as the Rationalist Association and the National Secular Society. He criticised Christianity from a rationalist perspective, but also was involved in the South Place Ethical Society which grew out of dissenting Protestantism and was a precursor of modern secular humanism.
WCharles Sedgwick Minot was an American anatomist and a founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research.
WJohn Murdoch was a Scottish Christian missionary who served in Ceylon and India in the 19th century. Murdoch first journeyed to Ceylon in order to serve as a head-master of the schools located in Kandy, yet shortly after his arrival he resigned due to concerns with the state-mandated curriculum. Murdoch instead began to work with various Christian societies within the country producing Christian tracts. After a successful career with the Ceylon Tract Society, he became the Agent and Travelling Secretary in India for the Christian Vernacular Education Society, located in India, working with this mission for the rest of his career. He retired from full-time missionary work in 1903, yet continued to publish his written works on a variety of sources which included politics, religion, and sociology. He died in India after becoming weakened by pneumonia in 1904 having never married yet leaving behind a legacy in his written work.
WFrank Podmore was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on spiritualism.
WBasava Premanand was an Indian skeptic, rationalist and debunker from Kerala, India. He organised many tours around rural India for the promotion of scientific thinking, exposing alleged miracles and scams carried out by various charlatans and godmen while spreading awareness of dangerous superstitions. Premanand was the founder of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, the convener of Indian CSICOP, and the owner-publisher-editor of the monthly magazine The Indian Skeptic, which investigates paranormal claims in India. He was known as one of the most vocal critics of Sathya Sai Baba.
WThomas William Rhys Davids was an English scholar of the Pāli language and founder of the Pāli Text Society. He took an active part in founding the British Academy and London School for Oriental Studies.
WCarl Eric Bechhofer Roberts, best known as C. E. Bechhofer Roberts was a British author, barrister, and journalist.
WVsevolod Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian historical novelist. His most famous work is Chronicle of Four Generations, an account of the fictional Gorbatov family from the time of Catherine the Great to the mid-nineteenth century. Solovyov's "atmosphere of nostalgia for the vanished age of the nobility" helps explain his "posthumous popularity among Russian émigrés."