Seventy Years Among Savages
- Edition: First Edition
- Publisher: George Allen & Unwin, London
- Published: 1921
- Length: 251 pages
- Format: Hardback
Summary
Seventy Years Among Savages is a book of reminiscences, criticising English life and customs from the humanitarian point of view. Henry Salt’s autobiography in which “The seventy years spent by me among (friendly) savages form the subject of this story, but not, be it noted, seventy years of consciousness that my life was so cast, for during the first part of my residence in the strange land where I was born, the dreadful reality of my surroundings was hardly suspected by me…”. The book deals with incidents which had a real significance on his life.
In spite of the complexities of our so-called civilization, mankind, regarded from the ethical standpoint, is still in a state of savagery. This view is illustrated with an abundance of anecodote, humorous and grave, from the writer’s personal recollections of Eton and Cambridge in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies; of the socialist and the vegetarian movements; of the Fellowship of the New Life; of the Shelley Society; and of the Humanitarian League.
The second edition of this book has never been published.
“Mr. Salt has hit upon an excellent title for his reminiscences; direct and downright, and yet with a good humour in its alliteration…… His book ought to be read for its serious purpose, as well as for its lighter parts.”—Times Literary Supplement.
“You and I, dear reader, who eat meat, and wage war, and see murderers executed and foxes hunted, without being appalled, are the savages.”—Punch.
“There is this much to be said for vegetarians, that they are the only cranks who have a sense of humour. At any rate, Mr. Salt is amply endowed with it, with the most happy results so far as this book is concerned.”—Morning Post.
“Mr. Salt is a first-class raconteur. There can be no queer fish of the seventy years he records which he has not potted for his book.”—MAURICE HEWLETT, in London Mercury.
“He loves his savages, even as Milton loved his Satan, knowing how much he would have had to commiserate himself as artist and spectator were he to be left to the contemplation of his own kind…… Mr . Salt’s quality is too diffused to make his book reviewable by quotation; it should be read at leisure, and tasted with deliberation, like a fine wine.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
Content
- The Argument
- Where Ignorance Was Bliss
- Literæ Inhumaniores
- The Discovery
- Cannibal’s Conscience
- Glimpses of Civilization
- The Poet-Pioneer
- Voices Crying in the Wilderness
- A League of Humaness
- Twentieth-Century Tortures
- Hunnish Sports and Fashions
- A Faddist’s Divisions
- A Faddist’s Diversions
- Hoof-Marks of the Vandal
- The Forlorn Hope
- The Cave-Man Re-Emerges
- Poety of Death and Love
- The Talisman
- Index
Reviews
- Civilization? The Athenæum, January 21, 1921
- Reminiscences of Mr. Henry S. Salt The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review, March 1921
- Are We Civilised? Aberdeen Daily Journal, January 31, 1921
- Eton Memories The Derby Daily Telegraph, January 22, 1921
- Seventy Years among Savages Plain English, January 29, 1921
- The Books of the Quarter The Hindustan Review, April 1923
- The British Savage Truth, February 2, 1921
- The Humane Crank London Daily Herald, 1921
- Seventy Years Among Savages The Times, January 11, 1921
- A Humanitarian Times Literary Supplement, January 20, 1921
