Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
-
Standard Name: Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline
Birth Name: Emmeline Pethick
Married Name: Emmeline Lawrence
Used Form: Emmeline Pethick Lawrence
Militant suffragist EPL
launched and co-edited the weekly journal Votes for Women with her husband, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
, in 1907. The journal began as the official publication of the militant suffrage organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
, but in 1912 the Pethick-Lawrences distanced themselves from the WSPU and began to publish it independently. During the first half of the twentieth century EPL
published a number of suffragist pamphlets, many of them printed versions of speeches she had previously delivered. Speeches she gave in her own defence at the conspiracy trial of 1912 were published in 1913. From 1908 to 1950, she wrote many letters to the editor on a wide variety of national and international political topics. Her autobiography, 1938, largely focuses on the militant suffrage movement and the involvement in it of herself and her husband, as well as on her pacifist activities after World War One.
With the declaration of war, however, on 4 August, 1914, VW
's politics and those of the NUWSS parted company. The NUWSS supported the government, and on August the sixth resolved to suspend political activity...
politics
Mary Gawthorpe
It was apparently MG
who began the action, when Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
refused to meet the suffrage deputation and she sprang on one of the sacred velvet chairs, and began to speak.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge.
127
politics
Beatrice Harraden
If these actions had Christabel's sanction, she wrote, you have lost your way, lost the trail, lost the vision of the distant scene.
Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. Routledge.
276
This letter marked her disillusionment with the increasingly militant tactics of...
The deputation was led by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
. CL
had thought carefully about volunteering, and when she set out that morning she left a letter for her mother (whom she had not seen since the...
Russell, Dora. The Tamarisk Tree 3 : Challenge to the Cold War. Virago.
3: 114, 368
Occupation
Maude Royden
Though unable to attend, she had served on the British Committee for the Congress in April of this year. Of the 180 British women who had planned to attend, only three were able to go:...
Literary responses
Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers was well reviewed. George Bernard Shaw
responded enthusiastically to the book, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
expressed her pleasure at its positive reception. Vera Brittain
also praised it, favourably comparing SP
's activism for...
Friends, Associates
Evelyn Sharp
Others with whom she shared this or that memorable experience were the Meynells (Wilfrid
, Alice
, and Viola
), Clarence Rook
and his wife, and Henry W. Nevinson
, whom she eventually married...
Friends, Associates
Dora Marsden
During the 1920s DM
's primary focus was her writing, which she continued mainly in isolation and under much mental and physical stress. However, she was assisted in this by Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
Friends, Associates
Emmeline Pankhurst
Keir Hardie
, a dear friend of EP
's after her husband's death, introduced her to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
, a crucial figure in the revivification of the suffrage movement. Her home in Clement's Inn, in...
Friends, Associates
Mary Gawthorpe
During her time with the WSPU, MG
worked with Christabel Pankhurst
(who was twenty-four when Gawthorpe first met her, before she had yet met Isabella Ford
), whom, like Ethel Snowden
, she knew from...
Mary Neal
, a leader in the folk-dance revival and joint founder with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
of the Esperance Club
for working girls, invited CL
to holiday with herself and some of the girls in autumn...
Timeline
September 1943: The Women's Publicity Planning Association...
Building item
September 1943
The Women's Publicity Planning Association
sponsored a mass meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, in support of the proposed Equal Citizenship (Blanket) Bill which would end all forms of sex discrimination.