Ramsden Balmforth

Ramsden Balmforth (13 January 1861 – 31 December 1941) was an English-born Unitarian minister and author who spent much of his adult life in South Africa. His father was a mechanic and a secularist.

As a young man, Balmforth joined the Fabian Society and became a friend of George Bernard Shaw. In 1886 he published a socialist-themed novel (his only work of fiction) under the pseudonym "Laon Ramsey".

In 1893, he married Agnes Ellam (1865–1945); the couple had two daughters and one son. During World War I, Balmforth co-founded, with Julia Solly, the South African Peace and Arbitration Society.

Selected bibliography

Landon Deecroft: a socialistic novel (1886; published under the pseudonym Laon Ramsey) The New Reformation and its relation to moral and social problems (1893) The Evolution of Christianity (1898) Some Social and Political Pioneers of the Nineteenth Century (1900) The Bible from the Standpoint of the Higher Criticism: The Old Testament (1904) The New Testament in the Light of the Higher Criticism (1905) Drama, Music-drama, and Religion as illustrated by Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" and "Parsifal" (1913) The Theory of Evolution and Its Influences on Religious Thought (1921) The Ethical and Religious Value of the Drama (1926) The Problem-play and its Influence on Modern Thought and Life (1928) Jesus the Man (1935)