Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Despard
-
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suffrage struggle and to Irish and other left-wing politics of her several generations, her diaries and letters remain unpublished.
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
After appearing with Labour leaders at the Albert Hall, SP
was told by her sister Christabel to give up her socialist activity or be forced out of her association with the WSPU
. She...
politics
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
While the WSPU
's recruitment increased during 1907, its governing members began to disagree over its direction: one party wanted the Union to be run democratically with a constitution, while the other, headed by Emmeline
Hirshfield, Claire. “The Woman’s Theatre in England: 1913-1918”. Theatre History Studies, Vol.
15
, pp. 123-37.
125-6
All...
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
Family and Intimate relationships
Mrs Alexander
Her father, Robert French
, was a solicitor from a Roscommon family. He was fond of hunting and sports in general.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce.
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...
Timeline
12 September 1936: Charlotte Haldane edited the first issue...