Henry Stephens Salt

Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt was a British writer and social reformer. He campaigned on prison reform, education, economic institutions, vegetarianism, anti-vivisectionism, pacifism, and the treatment of animals. Salt was also a literary critic, biographer, classical scholar, and naturalist. He introduced Mohandas Gandhi to the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and influenced Gandhi's views on vegetarianism. The International Vegetarian Union has described Salt as the "father of animal rights"; his Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892) was among the first works to argue explicitly for animal rights, rather than only for improved animal welfare.