Clementina Black

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Standard Name: Black, Clementina
Birth Name: Clementina Maria Black
Nickname: Clemmy
Nickname: Clemmie
CB wrote on a range of topics across many genres. Her work included six novels, journal articles, short stories, translations, plays, children's literature, and over seventy essays. She edited several journals which emerged from the late Victorian feminist movement, and wrote prolifically on the rights of the working classes and the need for trade unions.
Broomfield, Andrea, and Sally Mitchell, editors. Prose by Victorian Women. Garland, 1996.
600
She also took pains to get the voices and stories of working-class women into print.
Title page of Clementina Black's second novel, "Orlando", 1879 (1880 on title-page), vol. 1. This story contrasts a lost world of romance with a modern world in which women can be self-directed.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Edmund Spenser
Spenser's early women readers who were also poets seem to have included An Collins and Alicia D'Anvers . Later women writers in English either found him useful for raising the status of the romance genre...
Dedications Amy Levy
AL 's final volume of poems appeared posthumously under the title A London Plane-Tree, dedicated to Clementina Black .
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
117
Education Constance Garnett
Constance's education began at home with her mother. Her elder sister Clementina taught her French and German. Her brothers were primarily responsible for her early introduction to mathematics and geography.
Glage, Liselotte. Clementina Black: A Study in Social History and Literature. Carl Winter, 1981.
16
Family and Intimate relationships Constance Garnett
Her sister Clementina became well known as a labour activist who fought for an improvement in women's rights and the rights of the working classes. She was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction...
Fictionalization Amy Levy
Quite apart from the biographical errors perpetrated by James Warwick Price , other myths about her were woven from her Jewishness and her suicide. Her friend Clementina Black (perhaps feeling that her reputation needed rescue)...
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Other women writers present at the meeting were Amy Levy , Mathilde Blind , Clementina Black , and Graham Tomson (later Rosamund Marriott Watson) .
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
331
Friends, Associates Amy Levy
They included Olive Schreiner , the future Beatrice Webb , Dollie Maitland Radford , Margaret Harkness , Clementina Black (whose sister Constance had been a school friend of AL ), and Eleanor Marx . Through...
Friends, Associates E. Nesbit
Through her political interests she got to know George Bernard Shaw (with whom she had a brief affair but a succeeding steady friendship), Sidney Webb , Sydney Olivier , Annie Besant , Eleanor Marx ,...
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Leisure and Society Amy Levy
She confessed also that to live like Clementina Black and her sister, doing their own housework, did not accord with my own Philistine, middle class notions of comfort.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
255
She engaged, however, in socially provocative...
Occupation Amy Levy
She also this year helped Clementina Black in the office of the Women's Protective and Provident League .
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
179
politics Marie Belloc Lowndes
The letter challenged a recent antisuffragist manifesto, and stressed three points from Prime Minister Asquith 's statement to suffragists of 14 August. The points were that women had rendered as effective service to their country...
politics Edith Lyttelton
These women's pay, said the letter, was worse than the sweated wages universally condemned in pre-war days.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(15 February 1921): 6
Later that year, EL was also numbered among the women who tried to help...
politics Jane Hume Clapperton
Among others the committee also included Clementina Black , Beatrice Webb , and Maud Pember Reeves . It was attended by Emma Brooke and Isabella Ford .
Ishbel Maria Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen, editor. Women in Industrial Life: The International Congress of Women of 1899. T. Fisher Unwin, 1900.
front matter
politics Edith J. Simcox
Soon after Paterson's death, 1 December 1886, Clementina Black took over for them as acting secretary.
Goldman, Harold. Emma Paterson: She Led Woman into a Man’s World. Lawrence and Wishart, 1974.
109

Timeline

2 May 1857
A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .
Late 1889
An informal alliance was made between the Women's Co-operative Guild and the recently-formed Women's Trade Union Association , a sister organisation of working women.
26 November 1894
The Women's Industrial Council was formed in London (with Richard Haldane as President) from the earlier Women's Trade Union Association .
1906
The Anti-Sweating League was founded in England to fight for improved conditions and better rights for sweated workers.
15 April 1909
The Common Cause, the official organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , began weekly publication in Manchester.
20 October 1909
The Trade Boards Act was passed—a success for feminist campaigns against sweatshops and for minimum wages in the British clothing industry.
30 January 1920
The Common Cause, the official organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , ended publication in London under this name, even as subtitle. The next number appeared as The Woman's Leader.

Texts

Black, Clementina. A New Way of Housekeeping. W. Collins Sons, 1918.
Black, Clementina. A Sussex Idyl. Samuel Tinsley, 1877.
Meyer, Adèle Levis, and Clementina Black. Makers of Our Clothes: A Case for the Trade Boards. Duckworth, 1909.
Black, Clementina, editor. Married Women’s Work. G. Bell and Sons, 1915.
Black, Clementina, editor. Married Women’s Work. Garland, 1980.
Black, Clementina. Mericas, and Other Stories. W. Satchell, 1880.
Black, Clementina. Orlando. Smith, Elder, 1879.
Black, Clementina, and Alfred George Gardiner. Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage. Duckworth, 1907.