We have added two renowned dancers to the rich history collection available on the IVU website - Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky.

 

 
Here is another major addition to the history section of the IVU website. In 1883, Howard Williams published 'The Ethics of Diet', which was the first history of vegetarianism, being a collection of articles about everyone he could find from the ancient world onwards.

We now have the complete book online - from a mixture of 1883, 1887, 1896 editions:

 

 We have put together an online library of old (with a couple more recent works) veg-related books (many from the 19th century and earlier) - complete copies, mostly courtesy of the scanning being done by Google and Microsoft.

We now have a collection of 186 old books and journals in the IVU Online Libary - these are mostly complete original books in PDF format (some of them quite large so do check the file size).

 Here’s the latest update to the History pages of the IVU website.

The diary of George Bernard Shaw, October 12, 1890 records: ". . . I wrote some stuff for The Star about Salt's forthcoming lecture at the Shelley Society."

Vegetarianism and related trends, such as concern for our fellow animals, now abound in cyberspace. Here, courtesy of IVU (International Vegetarian Union) historian, John Davis, is a listing of some of the older veg sites in cyberspace.
photo right - from the cybercafe of the 1996 IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Johnstown, PA, USA

Last year Edgar Crook, of Canberra, Australia, published his book 'Vegetarianism in Australia: 1788-1948 - a cultural history'. This is an excellent, fascinating, and very readable account of the long struggle for acceptance of vegetarianism in a country that exports huge quantities of meat.

 There has probably always been a shared sensitivity between various branches of the arts and vegetarianism. Now, a new section of the IVU website attempts to trace a history of music and vegetarianism. It just looks at professional musicians as there would be countless numbers of enthusiastic amateurs, far too many to record.

IVU historian, John Davis, continues to update the history files on our website. Among the new materials are extracts from three books that talk about famous names in IVU history.

This report is courtesy of IVU historian John Davis.

In 1975, the first IVU World Veg Congress to be held in North America convened at the University of Maine, at Orono. American historians have stated: "Arguably it was the most important gathering of vegetarians in the United States in the twentieth century."

In 1981, Julia (now Professor) Twigg wrote her Ph.D. thesis, titled, ‘The Vegetarian Movement in England, 1847-1981: A Study in the Structure of its Ideology’. The thesis was never published, and only two or three copies existed, despite which all the more serious veg historians over the last 26 years have managed to gain access to it, and have made extensive use of it.

Julia recently agreed to the entire thesis, all 456 pages, being published on the IVU website, and this is now done. It covers a vast range of interests including health & nutrition, religion, organisations, sociology & politics, feminism, animal rights, education, the environment, and each of those for each of the historical periods covered.