Maude Royden

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Maude Royden , famous as an early twentieth-century campaigner for women's status in the ministry of the Church of England , was also a preacher, suffragist, feminist, and anti-war activist. She published at least fifty works in forty years, most of them polemical. Her pamphlets, sermons, and speeches range in topic through religion and Christianity, women's role in the Church , sexual morality and birth control, female suffrage and women's rights, pacifism, and national and international politics. She established the interdenominational fellowship the Guildhouse in 1920, preached there, and published the monthly Guildhouse Fellowship. From the 1910s until the late 1940s, she published many letters to the editor of the Times as well as articles there. Her autobiography details her unconventionally shared life with the Rev. Hudson Shaw and his wife .
  • BirthName: Agnes Maude Royden
  • Married: Shaw; Maude Royden Shaw
  • Indexed: A. Maude Royden

Milestones

23 November 1876

MR was born Agnes Maude Royden at Mossley Hill near Liverpool.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

After 12 May 1910

The Church League for Women's Suffrage printed Extracts from May Mission Speeches Delivered in London, by A. Maude Royden .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Royden, Maude. Extracts from May Mission Speeches Delivered in London. Church League for Women’s Suffrage, 1910.
1, 5

1921

In her well-known study of sexuality, Sex and Common Sense, MR argued that sex is not base but is a noble act of creation, and, more significantly, that women possess sexual instincts and must be allowed to act on them.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

November 1947

MR 's autobiography, A Threefold Cord, which largely focuses on her unconventional, platonic, three-way relationship with the Rev. Hudson Shaw and his wife Effie , appeared three years after Shaw's death.
Royden, Maude. A Threefold Cord. Victor Gollancz, Nov. 1947.
title-page and prelims
Fletcher, Sheila. Maude Royden: A Life. Basil Blackwell, 1989.
278

30 July 1956

At seventy-nine years of age, MR died at home in London after a long, unspecified illness.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(31 July 1956): 10
Fletcher, Sheila. Maude Royden: A Life. Basil Blackwell, 1989.
288

Biography

Birth and Family

23 November 1876

MR was born Agnes Maude Royden at Mossley Hill near Liverpool.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.