Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Despard
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Standard Name: Despard, Charlotte
Birth Name: Margaret Charlotte French
Married Name: Margaret Charlotte Despard
Indexed Name: C. Despard
Indexed Name: Mrs M. C. Despard
Nickname: Madame Desperate
CD
, who wrote and published during almost sixty years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, began with romantic novels, then allowed her already existent interest in political issues to percolate into her fiction. From the time of the suffrage struggle she became an editor, a prolific journalist, and a pamphleteer. Some of her poetry reached print when she was in her nineties. Despite her great importance to the suffrage struggle and to Irish and other left-wing politics of her several generations, her diaries and letters remain unpublished.
"Charlotte Despard" by James Jarche,1930-01-01.Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/charlotte-despard-speaking-at-anti-fascist-rally-london-c-news-photo/102731260.This image is licensed under the GETTY IMAGES CONTENT LICENCE AGREEMENT.
Her father, Robert French
, was a solicitor from a Roscommon family. He was fond of hunting and sports in general.
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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893.
59
The French family which produced writer and suffragist Charlotte Despard
was said to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Katharine Bruce Glasier
KBG
's husband, John Bruce Glasier
, fell ill in 1915 with cancer of the bowel. The combined physical and psychological demands of travelling, writing, and speaking for the cause finally took their toll under...
Friends, Associates
Naomi Jacob
NJ
met Charlotte Despard
during the days of the suffrage struggle, and later as an actress on tour visited her at Roebuck House in Clonskeagh, not long after Ireland became independent. The cabman driving...
Friends, Associates
Constance Lytton
Mary Neal
, a leader in the folk-dance revival and joint founder with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
of the Esperance Club
for working girls, invited CL
to holiday with herself and some of the girls in autumn...
Friends, Associates
Mary Gawthorpe
During her time with the WSPU, MG
worked with Christabel Pankhurst
(who was twenty-four when Gawthorpe first met her, before she had yet met Isabella Ford
), whom, like Ethel Snowden
, she knew from...
Friends, Associates
Maud Gonne
In her later years MG
confirmed her friendships with a number of politically-involved women such as Charlotte Despard
(with whom she shared a house for more than a decade), Constance Markiewicz
, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington
Hirshfield, Claire. “The Woman’s Theatre in England: 1913-1918”. Theatre History Studies, Vol.
15
, pp. 123-37.
125-6
All...
politics
Cicely Hamilton
CH
was an active member of several suffrage organizations, always aligning herself with the non-militant suffragists. She first belonged to the Women's Social and Political Union
, but in 1907 she left to join the...
politics
Naomi Jacob
NJ
began her political life as a Tory who thought Socialism deeply shocking, like all or most of the older generation of her very mixed family. She went out canvassing at elections, urging people to...
politics
Constance, Countess Markievicz
It was among her own boys' group that CCM
first began to go by the title of Madame rather than Countess. Anne Haverty
explains: In eschewing the Mrs of English usage, certain women showed...
politics
Mona Caird
MC
stepped into the public eye in the 1880s as a radical member of the women's movement, a supporter of all kinds of linked causes. An article in the Review of Reviews in 1893 equated...
politics
Alice Meynell
At eighteen she had realised the inequality that plagued women. She then wrote in her diary: Of all the crying evils in this depraved earth . . . the greatest . . . is the...
Her interest in suffrage succeeded to an interest in the temperance movement. She became an active suffrage lecturer, and (with her mother and one of her sisters) joined the Women's Freedom League
(founded by Charlotte Despard
George Bedborough
, secretary of the Legitimation League
which sought to change the law to improve the position of illegitimate children, was arrested, largely in an attempt to damage the League through him.
The Women's Franchise began weekly publication in London; it featured contributions from major societies within the suffrage movement and from individuals.
The Women's Freedom League Temporary Newsheet began weekly publication in London.
28 October 1909
Charlotte Despard
edited the first issue of The Vote: Organ of the Women's Freedom League, a weekly magazine from London covering a range of feminist issues, including suffrage.
27 July 1911
The Women's Franchise, which featured contributions from major societies within the suffrage movement and from individuals, ceased publication in London.
German and Allied forces at the front lines began an informal cease-fire, which lasted up to five days, in honour of the season.
July 1920
The Irish Citizen ended publication after a British soldier wrecked the press.
6 July 1928
Four days after the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act received the royal assent, a celebratory breakfast was held at the Hotel Cecil in London.
10 November 1933
The Vote, a weekly magazine covering a range of feminist issues including suffrage, ended publication.
Texts
Despard, Charlotte. A Modern Iago. Remington, 1879.
Despard, Charlotte. A Voice from the Dim-Millions. Griffith and Farran, 1884.
Despard, Charlotte. Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow. Samuel Tinsley, 1874.
Despard, Charlotte. Jonas Sylvester. Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowry, 1886.
Despard, Charlotte, and Mabel Collins. Outlawed. Henry J. Drame, 1908.
Despard, Charlotte. Songs of the Red Dawn. Odhla Printing, 1932.
Despard, Charlotte. The Rajah’s Heir. Smith, Elder, 1890.
Despard, Charlotte, and Christopher St John. Woman in the New Era. The Suffrage Shop, 1910.
Despard, Charlotte. Woman’s Franchise and Industry. Women’s Freedom League, 1913.