Beatrice Webb

-
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Margaret Harkness
MH and her cousin Beatrice Potter (later Beatrice Webb ) travelled together to Austria.
Goode, John. “Margaret Harkness and the Socialist Novel”. The Socialist Novel in Britain: Towards the Recovery of a Tradition, edited by H. Gustav Klaus, Harvester Press, pp. 45-66.
48
Bellamy, Joyce M., and John Saville, editors. Dictionary of Labour Biography. Macmillan.
viii: 105
Textual Production May Kendall
MK 's relationship with Rowntree is described by Diana Maltz as what Beatrice Potter Webb had been to Charles Booth twenty-five years earlier.
Maltz, Diana. “Sympathy, Humor, and the Abject Poor in the Work of May Kendall”. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Vol.
50
, No. 3, ELT Press, pp. 313-32.
313
Her work suggests that although she was an advocate for social...
Textual Production Celia Fiennes
The title seems to place the work in a tradition of intrepid Englishwoman abroad, including Emma Roberts , Matilda Betham-Edwards , Isabella Bird , Mabel Sharman Crawford , and others. Beatrice and Sidney Webb consulted...
Textual Production H. G. Wells
HGW 's The New Machiavelli was a political roman à clef which includes unfriendly comic sketches of many public figures on the left, including Beatrice and Sidney Webb .
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(29 March 1911): 11
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Textual Production Mary Agnes Hamilton
MAH issued another political biography, entitled Sidney and Beatrice Webb : A Study in Contemporary Biography, undertaken because she felt that the Webbs were not sufficiently valued by the current generation.
Shadwell, Arthur. “Mr & Mrs Webb”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1655, p. 702.
702
Textual Production Mary Agnes Hamilton
In 1935, when she gathered a small group of Labour friends to discuss her project, she found that they gravitated inevitably to the topic of Henderson's relations with Ramsay MacDonald . Two years later she...
Textual Features Mary Augusta Ward
Her signatories—who mostly owed their eminence to their position as the the wives of prominent men—included Mrs Leslie Stephen , Mrs Matthew Arnold , Mrs Kegan Paul (who was a novelist in her own right),...
Textual Features Ann Oakley
This book covers a great deal of ground. When it turns back from Modern Problems to A Brief History of Methodology its exemplars include Margaret Cavendish (who also provides one of three opening epigraphs), the...
politics Annie Besant
Sidney and Beatrice Webb later acknowledged the importance of AB 's efforts to the new Unionism that became widespread after this year.
Taylor, Anne. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
212
politics Clementina Black
In London she met Fabian and Marxist socialists. She was a good friend of Eleanor Marx for some time, though their friendship later waned.
Garnett, Richard. Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life. Sinclair-Stevenson.
40
One source notes that CB 's affinity with Fabianism likely...
politics Mary Augusta Ward
It was with regard to women's rights that MAW 's increasing conservatism was most clearly marked: although she was a leading figure in the cause for advancing women's education, by the late 1880s she was...
politics Jane Hume Clapperton
Among others the committee also included Clementina Black , Beatrice Webb , and Maud Pember Reeves . It was attended by Emma Brooke and Isabella Ford .
Ishbel Maria Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen, editor. Women in Industrial Life: The International Congress of Women of 1899. T. Fisher Unwin.
front matter
politics Marie Belloc Lowndes
The letter challenged a recent antisuffragist manifesto, and stressed three points from Prime Minister Asquith 's statement to suffragists of 14 August. The points were that women had rendered as effective service to their country...
politics Harriet Shaw Weaver
She was elected to the Marylebone Labour Party committee in 1936. In a programme of self-education about labour and capitalism, she read Marx 's Das Kapital, Sidney and Beatrice Webb 's Soviet Communism: A...
politics Katharine Bruce Glasier
After their marriage, KBG and her husband, John Bruce Glasier , formed an effective socialist partnership very much like that of Sidney and Beatrice Webb . They maintained their involvement in the Independent Labour Party

Timeline

January 1884: The Fabian Society was founded in London...

National or international item

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...

National or international item

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...

Building item

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...

Building item

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...

Building item

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...

Building item

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...

National or international item

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...

National or international item

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...

National or international item

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...

Texts

Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain. Longmans, Green, 1920.
Webb, Beatrice, and William Henry, first Baron Beveridge. Beatrice Webb’s Diaries, 1912-1924. Editor Cole, Margaret I., Longmans, 1952.
Webb, Beatrice. Beatrice Webb’s Diaries, 1924-1932. Editor Cole, Margaret I., Longmans, 1956.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. Longmans, Green, 1929.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Industrial Democracy. Longmans, Green, 1897.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. Longmans, Green, 1932.
Webb, Beatrice. My Apprenticeship. Longmans, Green, 1926.
Webb, Beatrice. Our Partnership. Editors Drake, Barbara and Margaret I. Cole, Longmans, Green, 1948.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?. Longmans, Green, 1935.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Case for the Factory Acts. Editor Webb, Beatrice, G. Richards, 1901.
Webb, Beatrice. The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain. Swann Sonnenschein, 1891.
Webb, Beatrice. The Diary of Beatrice Webb. Editors MacKenzie, Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. The History of Trade Unionism. Longmans, Green, 1894.
Webb, Beatrice. The Wages of Men and Women: Should They be Equal?. Fabian Society, 1919.
Webb, Beatrice, and Sidney Webb. Visit to New Zealand in 1898. Price Milburn, 1959.
Webb, Beatrice. Women and the Factory Acts. Fabian Society, 1896.