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Beatrice Webb
-
Standard Name: Webb, Beatrice
Birth Name: Beatrice Potter
Married Name: Beatrice Webb
Indexed Name: Mrs Sidney Webb
Titled: Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield
An important and forceful left-wing intellectual (a shaper both of the Fabian Society
and of the Labour Party
), BW
wrote at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. Her subjects were social issues: for instance, unemployment, and the development of the co-operative movement and of trade unions. She was also (and from the same public-spirited motives) remarkable as a diarist and autobiographer. Almost all her writing on public topics (nearly forty publications, including eighteen monographs) was done in collaboration with her husband, Sidney Webb
. So thoroughly are they thought of as one mind that joint biographies of them are more common than individual ones.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Cultural formation | Amber Reeves | Born a New Zealander, she clearly regarded herself later in life as English. Her parents were highly educated professionals. Her mother was a suffragist, and both parents became members of the Fabian Society
(founded three... |
| Education | Emma Frances Brooke | The school, which was founded this year by Beatrice
and Sidney Webb
, Graham Wallas
, and George Bernard Shaw
, focused on the study of inequalities and poverty issues with the aim of improving... |
| Education | Dorothy Bussy | Marie Souvestre was a free-thinking feminist, daughter of the French author and philosopher Emile Souvestre
. Her school, Les Ruches, was widely admired for its academic rigour. It educated many outstanding women, including Beatrice Chamberlain |
| Education | Margaret Harkness | MH
was educated at home throughout her childhood. When she was twenty-one, she was sent to board at a fashionable girls' school Nord, Deborah Epstein. The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb. University of Massachusetts Press, 1985. 40 |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Margaret Harkness | An undated letter to Beatrice Webb
further suggests that MH
had an affair with an unknown married man. Bellamy, Joyce M., and John Saville, editors. Dictionary of Labour Biography. Macmillan, 1972. viii: 110 |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Constance Lytton | Constance Lytton's elder sister, Elizabeth Edith (later Countess of Balfour)
, became a novelist and a good friend of Beatrice Webb
. Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. under Elizabeth Edith Balfour |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Bessie Rayner Parkes | According to her daughter, BRP
received a proposal of marriage from the much older Richard Potter
(who was a business friend of her father's, and himself the father of the future Beatrice Webb
) after... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Amber Reeves | AR
's time at the |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Margaret Harkness | MH
's mother, Elizabeth Seddon Bolton Toswill Harkness
, had been married and widowed before. She was the daughter of William Seddon
, a Leicestershire lace-maker. Through her, Margaret was related to the Potter family... |
| Fictionalization | Amber Reeves | After the appearance of her first three novels, two critics gave AR
a significant place in accounts of the current state of fiction. R. Brimley Johnson
characterised her as a sex-explorer, free from either... |
| Friends, Associates | Margaret Harkness | Probably through sisters Kate Potter Courtney
(whose house Harkness often stayed at) and Beatrice Potter (later Webb)
, MH
began to associate with the intellectuals who frequented the Reading Room of the British Museum
... |
| Friends, Associates | Julia Strachey | Shortly after the wedding, Julia became the charge of Alys Russell
, a suffrage and temperance activist who was also the aunt of Ray (Costelloe) Strachey
, sister of writer Logan Pearsall Smith
and Mary Berenson |
| Friends, Associates | Emma Frances Brooke | EFB
's involvement with the socialist and feminist movements of the day brought her into close contact with several notable activists and revolutionaries. Through the Fabian Society
, she interacted with Beatrice
and Sidney Webb |
| 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 | Katharine Bruce Glasier | Her involvement in socialist circles led her to acquaintance with Sidney
and Beatrice Webb
, Edward Hulton
(editor of the Sunday Chronicle), and Robert Blatchford
, for whom she wrote several articles. Thompson, Laurence. The Enthusiasts. Victor Gollancz Limited, 1971. 71 |
Timeline
January 1884
The Fabian Society
was founded in London to publicize socialist ideas and investigate the application of socialist principles to British conditions.
12 August 1889
The London Dock Strike began; it aroused widespread sympathy for striking dockers.
March 1906
A company was set up, largely through the efforts of Henrietta Barnett
, for the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb just north of London, as a community including people of all classes and income levels.
13 August 1912
Octavia Hill
, housing advocate and one-time friend of John Ruskin
, died of cancer in her home at 190 Marylebone Road, London.
December 1927
1928
Members of the British Federation of University Women (later known as the British Federation of Women Graduates
) established the Sybil Campbell Libraryfor the study of the expansion of the role of women in recent generations.
Late July 1931
In Britain the confusingly-named May committee responded to escalation both in the international financial crisis and mass unemployment at home, by advising draconian cuts in government expenditure.
30 July 1932
The Independent Labour Party
, increasingly disillusioned with the Labour Party
's movement towards the centre, took a decision to disaffiliate from its own larger and more successful offspring.
26 July 1945
The postwar general election put the Labour Party
in power with a landslide victory. Clement Attlee
became Prime Minister; prominent in his Cabinet were Herbert Morrison
, Ernest Bevin
, Hugh Dalton
, and Sir...