Jane Hume Clapperton

22 September 1832 - 30 September 1914

Jane Hume Clapperton wrote several works of social theory in the late nineteenth century that combined her feminist ethos with her concern for the social problems facing contemporary England. She advanced a philosophy of social reform that was based on the principles of evolutionary theory and drew substantially on the theory of evolutionary eugenics, yet maintained a radical critique of contemporary sexual relations and advanced the principles of communal living and municipal socialism. In addition to the two lengthy books of social theory for which she is best known, she wrote at least two pamphlets and published occasional articles in mainstream and feminist journals. She also penned a utopiannovel in which her theories of communal living are put into fictional practice.JHC was a spirited defender of the suffrage cause and regarded education—particularly sex education—as pivotal to the political, economic, and legal advancement of women.

Milestones

22 September 1832

Jane Hume Clapperton was born in Edinburgh, in the parish of St Cuthbert's, the tenth of twelve children.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

May 1880

Probably JHC 's first piece of published writing, an article entitled Agnosticism and Women: A Reply (to a piece by Bertha Lathbury the previous month), appeared in The Nineteenth Century.

This assumes that the early date occasionally given for JHC 's pamphlet entitled What Do We Women Want? is mistaken.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index.

24 October 1885

Published on this day, JHC 's first lengthy work, Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness, an exposition of social theory based on the principles of evolutionary eugenics, brought her to the attention of the public.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Athenæum. J. Lection.

523

7 May 1904

JHC 's final known work, A Vision of the Future, another book of social theory, appeared in print.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index.

The Speaker.

30 September 1914

JHC died suddenly from a cerebral haemorrhage at her home, 35 Drummond Place, Edinburgh.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Biography

Birth and Background

22 September 1832

Jane Hume Clapperton was born in Edinburgh, in the parish of St Cuthbert's, the tenth of twelve children.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.