Bradshaw, William Richard
William Richard Bradshaw (1851–1927) was an Irish-born American author, editor and lecturer who served as president of the New York Anti-Vivisection Society. He is known best for his science-fiction novel The Goddess of Atvatabar.
Bradshaw was born during 1851 in Ireland and brought to the United States as an infant. He was a resident of Flushing, Queens, New York 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.
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, a Utopian hollow Earth novel.
In the days before the turn of the century, Lexington White – heir to the uncountable millions of the White fortune – sailed from New York in the specially commissioned ice-breaker Polar King for the arctic wastes of the North Pole.
The expedition never found the object of their quest.
Instead, they found a world within the world, lit by the fires of an unquenchable inner sun, filled with creatures beyond imagination, peopled with civilized empires at the height of cultural and spiritual development and ruled over all by the immortally unapproachable Goddess.
It was a perfect world, filled with the innocence of Ideal Love, and the purity of the Union of Twin Souls.
And Lexington White was a man of the outer world, an agent of change in the untouched inner world of Atvatabar. Desire, conquest, and enlightenment ignite in a firestorm of passion that erupts into full-blown civil war with the ultimate prize at stake: the Goddess herself.
The Goddess of Atvatabar is now available directly from Critical Press Media in popular ebook formats and as a paperback printed copy from Lulu. Ebooks downloads contain a zip file with DRM-Free PDF and MobiPocket PRC files, viewable on PCs, smart phones, PDAs, and dedicated ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle. Support independent publishing and purchase a 238-page, perfect-bound paperback from Lulu. William H. Bradshaw’s story and other great works may be read online in the Critical Press Library.