Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eleanor Rathbone
-
Standard Name: Rathbone, Eleanor
Birth Name: Eleanor Florence Rathbone
Indexed Name: Eleanor F. Rathbone
Feminist politician ER
is called by a recent biographer the most significant woman in British politics in the first half of the 20th century.
Johnson, Richard William. “Associated Prigs”. London Review of Books, pp. 19-21.
19
She wrote books, pamphlets, and essays on the various social and political causes to which she was committed throughout her long career. In many of her texts, she blends argument about more than one of the many movements or initiatives she supported, such as feminism and state-funded family endowments.
At Manchester, AU
lived in the women's residence, Ashburne House. Formative teachers in her life included Hilda Oakeley
Oakeley, a Somerville College graduate and a close friend of Eleanor Rathbone
, had a great impact...
Textual Features
Ray Strachey
In this volume contributors Eleanor F. Rathbone
, MP (a very early woman member of the House of Commons), Mary Agnes Hamilton
, Erna Reiss
, Alison Neilans
, and RS
herself assess the legal...
Occupation
Maude Royden
In June 1921, they moved the Fellowship Services to the Guildhouse, Eccleston Square, where MR
continued to preach until she resigned in December 1936. She resigned because, she said, I have to choose; and...
Occupation
Maude Royden
Between 1923 and January 1924, she used this position to urge the Church to revise its marriage service by removing implications of female subordination in marriage, specifically the command that the wife obey the husband...
Textual Production
Maude Royden
Other contributors included feminist and suffragist Eleanor Rathbone
, Elinor Burns
, and MR
's nephew Ralph Rooper
. Royden's name stands first on the title-page.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Occupation
Maude Royden
MR
served as a member of the Family Endowment Committee
, which was organised by Eleanor Rathbone
to investigate poverty in Britain and to instigate changes in the social and financial treatment of motherhood.
Lewis, Jane. “Beyond Suffrage: English Feminism in the 1920s”. The Maryland Historian, Vol.
In 1915 she resigned from the society, which had its source in the merging in 1887 of seventeen organizations devoted to campaigning for women's emancipation. Lydia Becker
, then Millicent Garrett Fawcett
, had been...
Occupation
Maude Royden
Once women had received the vote, MR
, whose feminism stressed the differences epitomized in maternity, joined Eleanor Rathbone
and Mary Stocks
in arguing that the status of motherhood should be raised to that of...
Literary responses
Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers was well reviewed. George Bernard Shaw
responded enthusiastically to the book, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
expressed her pleasure at its positive reception. Vera Brittain
also praised it, favourably comparing SP
's activism for...
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
Marsden's editorials began with a two-part piece, Bondwomen. Here she notes that social exchanges are dominated by a patriarchy created and governed by men: though some men are servants all women are servants and...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Karen Gershon
The book is powerfully carried by political undercurrents. Actions of real-world heroes (Eleanor Rathbone
, Quaker champion both of refugees and of Jewish women; Chaim Weizman
, who in February 1949 was to become...
Textual Features
Rosita Forbes
RF
builds her conclusion from the idea of two great influences in India that we, that is English people, are ignorant of: the influence of religion, and the influence of women. The latter is immeasurable...
Timeline
1867: Liverpool philanthropist William Rathbone...
Building item
1867
Liverpool philanthropist William Rathbone
(father of Eleanor Rathbone
) published a book arguing the necessity of organized rather than random acts of charity.
Early 1919: The National Union of Societies for Equal...
6 February 1920: The Woman's Leader (new incarnation of The...
Building item
6 February 1920
The Woman's Leader (new incarnation of The Common Cause) began publication in London. Under its new title it became the most substantial feminist periodical of the 1920s.
1928: Members of the British Federation of University...
30 May 1929: Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of...
National or international item
30 May 1929
Labour
came in twenty-six votes ahead of the Conservatives
in the first general election with full women's suffrage: the prospect of voting by women under thirty brought the demeaning nickname of the Flapper Election....
December 1929: The Duchess of Atholl spoke in the House...
National or international item
December 1929
The Duchess of Atholl
spoke in the House of Commons
on the issue of female circumcision or genital mutilation among the Kikuyu people of Kenya.
March 1933: The Woman's Leader (formerly The Common Cause)...
Building item
March 1933
The Woman's Leader (formerly The Common Cause) ended publication; once again it was revived in a new form, the following month, as The Townswoman.
1935: The Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction...
15 June 1945: Family allowances were established in En...
Building item
15 June 1945
Family allowances were established in England.
Earlier 1981: Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey,...
Building item
Earlier 1981
Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey
, already an activist on behalf of poor communities, became chairman of the Liverpool police authority not long before the Toxteth race riots broke out.
Texts
Rathbone, Eleanor. “A Personal View of the Refugee Problem”. New Statesman and Nation, pp. 568-9.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Child Marriage: The Indian Minotaur. G. Allen and Unwin, 1934.
Rathbone, Eleanor et al. Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal for the National Endowment of Motherhood. Headley, 1918.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Falsehoods and Facts about the Jews. V. Gollancz, 1945.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Report of an Inquiry into the Conditions of Dock Labour at the Liverpool Docks. Northern Publishing, 1904.
Rathbone, Eleanor. The Case for Family Allowances. Penguin Books, 1940.
Rathbone, Eleanor. The Disinherited Family. E. Arnold, 1924.
Rathbone, Eleanor, and Malcolm Thomson. War Can Be Averted. V. Gollancz, 1938.
Rathbone, Eleanor. William Rathbone: A Memoir. Macmillan, 1905.