Beatrice Webb

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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.
Black and white photograph of Beatrice Webb, seated with one arm resting on the arm of her chair. She is wearing a dark jacket with a light collar, and a polka-dotted tie. Her white hair is pulled back.
"Beatrice Webb" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beatrice_Webb,_1943.jpg. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

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
, Stirling House in Bournemouth, to be finished. Here she...
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
As Betty Balfour she published a popular account of...
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 London School of Economics was ended when she became pregnant as a result of a sexual liaison with H. G. Wells , which had begun while she was at Cambridge...
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
With...

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
Nancy Hewins opened the first production by her touring Osiris Players , Britain's first professional all-female theatre company (successor to the amateur Isis Players , which she had run as an Oxford undergraduate).
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...