John M. Robertson

Montaigne and Shakspere (Dodo Press) John M. Robertson

John Mackinnon Robertson (1856-1933) was a prolific journalist, advocate of rationalism and secularism, and Liberal Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for Tyneside from 1906 to 1918. Robertson was born on the Isle of Arran and left school at the age of thirteen to become a clerk and then a journalist. In 1878 he became a follower of secularist leader Charles Bradlaugh and became active in the secularist cause in Edinburgh, before moving to London to become assistant editor of Bradlaugh's paper National Reformer, subsequently taking over as editor on Bradlaugh's death in 1891. Robertson was also an appointed lecturer for the freethinking South Place Ethical Society from 1899 until the 1920s. Robertson was an advocate of the Jesus-Myth theory, and in several books he argued strongly against the historicity of Jesus. His works include: The Fallacy of Saving (1892), Charles Bradlaugh (with Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner) (1894), Montaigne and Shakspere (1897), A Short History of Christianity (1902/13) and Modern Humanists Reconsidered (1927).