The Freethinker, founded in 1881 was one of the first secular humanist magazines, and also one of the oldest surviving one, moving online only in 2014. It was founded by G. W. Foote, who was its chief editor for 34 years and stated the magazine's purpose as The Freethinker is an anti-Christian organ, and must therefore be chiefly aggressive. It will wage relentless war against superstition in general, and against Christian superstition in particular. It will do its best to employ the resources of Science, Scholarship, Philosophy and Ethics against the claims of the Bible as a Divine Revelation; and it will not scruple to employ for the same purpose any weapons of ridicule or sarcasm that may be borrowed from the armoury of Common Sense. Flowers of Freethought is a collection of Foote's articles for the Freethinker; this second series contains 55 of them.

George William Foote, a British secularist, was convicted and imprisoned on the charge of blasphemy after founding "The Freethinker", a magazine that, despite the best efforts of the 19th Century British judicial system, is still going strong. "Prisoner for Blasphemy" is a memoir of his several trials and final imprisonment in Holloway Gaol. Although Foote's was the last prominent blasphemy case in England, his hope that the blasphemy law would soon be abolished was not to be realised until almost a century after his death, in 2008.