Thomas Tryon

Thomas Tryon (September 6, 1634 – August 21, 1703) was an English merchant, author of popular self-help books, and early advocate of vegetarianism.

Born in 1634 in Bibury near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England, he had to work spinning wool as a child and received no education. As a teenager, he worked as a shepherd till the age of eighteen and managed to learn reading and writing in his spare time. In 1652 he moved to London without telling his parents and apprenticed with a hatter. He became an Anabaptist in 1654 under the influence of his master. He liked the ascetic lifestyle of that congregation, but soon he found his own independent spiritual way after reading the writings of Jakob Böhme. In 1657 he heard an inner voice, which he named the "Voice of Wisdom", encouraging him to become a vegetarian and to live on a frugal diet. He married in 1661 but failed to convert his wife to his lifestyle.

He traveled to Barbados hoping to succeed in his hat trade and to profit from greater religious tolerance there, but was shocked by the cruelty of slavery in the plantations. In 1669 he returned to London and settled in Hackney. In 1682 his inner voice told him to engage in writing and to publish books in order to propagate temperance and nonviolence. So in the last two decades of his life he published twenty-seven works on a wide range of subjects, including education, nutrition, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and other health issues, and treatment of slaves. At the same time he continued his hat trade and grew wealthy. Some of his self-help books sold very well. His most widely read book was The Way to Health, published in 1691 as a second edition of Health's Grand Preservative; or, The Women's Best Doctor (1682). It inspired Benjamin Franklin to adopt vegetarianism. Tryon’s writings also impressed playwright Aphra Behn, whose “On the Author of that Excellent Book Intitled The way to HEALTH, LONG LIFE, and HAPPINESS,” appears in Tryon's 1697 Way to Health," and vegetarian poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Tryon died in 1703 and his Memoirs were published posthumously in 1705.

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