Beatrice Webb

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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
Occupation Virginia Woolf
The Woolfs were planning to acquire a printing press as early as 22 February 1915, when Virginia wrote to Margaret Llewelyn Davies about their excitement over the prospect: there's a chance of damaging the Webb
politics Virginia Woolf
On 10 May Germany had invaded Holland and Belgium. In the event of an invasion of England, they could indeed expect a terrible personal fate, on account of their anti-war politics, Leonard's anti-war career and...
Friends, Associates Amabel Williams-Ellis
Her political activities kept AWE at the centre of London's socially-conscious literary circles. Guests at The Well of Loneliness tea-party included Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay , Vita Sackville-West , G. B. Shaw , and...
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.
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 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...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
Beatrice Webb called this novel the most useful bit of work that has been done for many a long day. You have managed to give the arguments for and against factory legislation and a fixed...
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),...
Friends, Associates Julia Strachey
Shortly after the wedding, Julia became the charge of Alys Russell , a suffrage and temperance activist who was also the aunt of Ray (Costelloe) Strachey , sister of writer Logan Pearsall Smith and Mary Berenson
Friends, Associates Herbert Spencer
His broad social circle included several other women writers. Frances Power Cobbe , Eliza Lynn Linton , Matilda Betham-Edwards , and sisters Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff , were all his acquaintances. Later in life...
Friends, Associates Dora Russell
Sylvia Pankhurst enrolled her son as a day-boy at Beacon Hill, and lived nearby while writing The Suffragette Movement; Beatrice and Sidney Webb , and G. B. Shaw also visited. The school hosted annual...
Cultural formation Amber Reeves
Born a New Zealander, she clearly regarded herself later in life as English. Her parents were highly educated professionals. Her mother was a suffragist, and both parents became members of the Fabian Society (founded three...
Friends, Associates Amber Reeves
AR 's parents' circle of friends quickly grew to include most of the Fabians: Beatrice and Sidney Webb , Edith Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland , George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Pember Reeves
Family and Intimate relationships Amber Reeves
AR 's time at the London School of Economics was ended when she became pregnant as a result of a sexual liaison with H. G. Wells , which had begun while she was at Cambridge...
Friends, Associates Amber Reeves
Beatrice Webb resolved that she and her husband would stand by Amber (if she would let them) and drop H. G. Wells. A close friend of AR 's some years after the war was Sir Matthew Nathan

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.