Constance Naden was the daughter of an architect and a woman who died from the effects of childbirth; she was raised by her mother's parents. After attending a Utilitarian day-school, Naden went to Mason Science College in Birmingham where she excelled in logic and science. She was from this period in her life both a free-thinking secularist and a devotee of the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer.
Naden published her first collection of poetry in 1881 and her second and last--having come to see verse as "a mere amusement"--in 1887. Meanwhile, she wrote on evolution and its ethical implications in various periodicals. Inheriting a fortune from her grandmother in 1887, she visited India, returning to pursue her interests in scientific writing and support of various feminist causes such as suffrage. She died after a fever contracted in India and a major operation. She was at the time of her death greatly respected for her contributions to a range of scientific and philosophical debate.
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