William Richard Bradshaw (1851–1927) was an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

-born American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 and lecturer who served as president of the New York Anti-Vivisection Society. He is known best for his science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

-type novel The Goddess of Atvatabar.

Life

Bradshaw was born in 1851 in Ireland and brought to the United States as an infant. He was a resident of Flushing

Flushing, Queens

Flushing, founded in 1645, is a neighborhood in the north central part of the City of New York borough of Queens, east of Manhattan.Flushing was one of the first Dutch settlements on Long Island. Today, it is one of the largest and most diverse neighborhoods in New York City...

, Queens, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 from 1896 until his death (residing at 57 St. George's Place, Flushing, during December, 1913).
He was an active participant of anti-vivisectionism for many years.
A member of the Republican party, he served as a party district captain in Flushing. Bradshaw died after a brief illness at his home at 37 Locust Street, Flushing on July 19, 1927, aged 75. He was survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters.

Literary career

Bradshaw contributed regularly to a number of magazines, and served as editor of two of them, Literary Life and later The Decorator and Decorator and Furnisher. He was also associated with Field and Stream magazine. He wrote a number of books, most importantly on vivisection, but is remembered mainly for a work of fiction, The Goddess of Atvatabar: being the history of the discovery of the interior world, and conquest of Atvatabar, a Utopian hollow Earth

Hollow Earth

The Hollow Earth hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either entirely hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has...

 novel. It was published by J. F. Douthitt in 1892, and featured an introduction by Julian Hawthorne

Julian Hawthorne

Julian Hawthorne was an American writer and journalist, the son of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody. He wrote numerous poems, novels, short stories, mystery/detective fiction, essays, travel books, biographies and histories...

.

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