Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
-
Standard Name: Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline
Birth Name: Emmeline Pethick
Married Name: Emmeline Lawrence
Used Form: Emmeline Pethick Lawrence
Militant suffragist EPL
launched and co-edited the weekly journal Votes for Women with her husband, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
, in 1907. The journal began as the official publication of the militant suffrage organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
, but in 1912 the Pethick-Lawrences distanced themselves from the WSPU and began to publish it independently. During the first half of the twentieth century EPL
published a number of suffragist pamphlets, many of them printed versions of speeches she had previously delivered. Speeches she gave in her own defence at the conspiracy trial of 1912 were published in 1913. From 1908 to 1950, she wrote many letters to the editor on a wide variety of national and international political topics. Her autobiography, 1938, largely focuses on the militant suffrage movement and the involvement in it of herself and her husband, as well as on her pacifist activities after World War One.
During the 1920s DM
's primary focus was her writing, which she continued mainly in isolation and under much mental and physical stress. However, she was assisted in this by Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
Residence
Christabel Pankhurst
CP
settled in London, at the home of the Pethick-Lawrences
in Clement's Inn, shortly after Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
began working as the WSPU
treasurer.
Castle, Barbara. Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst. Penguin.
50-2
Mitchell, David J. The Fighting Pankhursts: A Study in Tenacity. MacMillan.
30
Cultural formation
Christabel Pankhurst
There is some suggestion that CP
may have had lesbian relationships. She excited devotion among her female followers, and at least one—novelist Elizabeth Robins
—admitted to falling in love with her. CP
also spent much...
Textual Production
Christabel Pankhurst
Christabel wrote her account in the 1930s, after the appearance of Sylvia Pankhurst
's The Suffragette Movement, but resisted appeals to publish it. The manuscript got as far as the publisher's before she decided...
Friends, Associates
Emmeline Pankhurst
Keir Hardie
, a dear friend of EP
's after her husband's death, introduced her to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
, a crucial figure in the revivification of the suffrage movement. Her home in Clement's Inn, in...
Dedications
Sylvia Pankhurst
SP
reflected on her life and the lives of others during the First World War in The Home Front: a Mirror to Life in England During the First World War, published this year and...
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...
Though unable to attend, she had served on the British Committee for the Congress in April of this year. Of the 180 British women who had planned to attend, only three were able to go:...
Russell, Dora. The Tamarisk Tree 3 : Challenge to the Cold War. Virago.
3: 114, 368
Reception
Olive Schreiner
The book was a particular delight to women readers, but its popularity extended to people of both genders and all classes. Lady Constance Lytton
later recalled that her father and the artist George Frederic Watts
ES
spent a night in a police-station cell en route for another sojourn in Holloway
, having been arrested along with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
and Lady Sybil Smith
outside the House of Commons
.
Sharp, Evelyn. Unfinished Adventure. John Lane, Bodley Head.
144-5
Friends, Associates
Evelyn Sharp
Others with whom she shared this or that memorable experience were the Meynells (Wilfrid
, Alice
, and Viola
), Clarence Rook
and his wife, and Henry W. Nevinson
, whom she eventually married...
Timeline
September 1943: The Women's Publicity Planning Association...
Building item
September 1943
The Women's Publicity Planning Association
sponsored a mass meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, in support of the proposed Equal Citizenship (Blanket) Bill which would end all forms of sex discrimination.