L. S. Bevington

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LSB was an essayist, philosopher and poet, one of a very small handful of publishing anarcho-communist women. She issued three collections of poetry, over thirty essays, and a small number of translations in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the course of her life, she developed into a vociferous activist for communal governance of society free from money, religion, and state apparatus, and supported violence as a necessary element of revolution. Her work is strongly tied to post-Darwinian theories of evolution.
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
1, 27

Milestones

14 May 1845

Louisa Sarah Bevington was born in Battersea in South London, the eldest of eight children (of whom seven were girls).
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
3
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.

October 1871

LSB probably first reached print with two sonnets in the Quaker periodical the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, titled Sonnet and A Double Sonnet. She may have added a third sonnet in the same journal this year.
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
130, 415, 420, 428
Miles, Alfred H., editor. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. AMS Press.
9: 227
Senaha, Eijun. “A Life of Louisa Sarah Bevington”. The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences, Vol.
101
, pp. 131-49.
133

October-December 1879

LSB followed The Personal Aspect of Responsibility with another scientific or philosophical essay, published in two parts in Nineteenth Century, entitled Modern Atheism and Mr. Mallock. It remains her best-known essay.
Miles, Alfred H., editor. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. AMS Press.
9: 228
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
8, 127
Senaha, Eijun. “A Life of Louisa Sarah Bevington”. The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences, Vol.
101
, pp. 131-49.
136
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. http://c19index.chadwyck.com/home.do.

By 5 August 1882

LSB published her second and probably best-known volume, Poems, Lyrics, and Sonnets, which is more metrically experimental than her earlier Key-Notes and more explicitly grounded in non-Christian philosophy.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
173
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.

By November 28 1895

After a long illness, LSB died, aged fifty, at Willesden in Middlesex. The official cause of death was heart disease and dropsy (edema).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Senaha, Eijun. “A Life of Louisa Sarah Bevington”. The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences, Vol.
101
, pp. 131-49.
132
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
20, 25n55

Biography

Birth and Family

14 May 1845

Louisa Sarah Bevington was born in Battersea in South London, the eldest of eight children (of whom seven were girls).
Domingue, Jackie Dees. Doctrine and Dynamite. Texas A and M.
3
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.

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