WHAT THE WOMEN WROTE
WHAT THE WOMEN WROTE
In another post, I wrote about the New Liberal men’s views of women’s suffrage and the other questions that women had raised, going ‘beyond the vote’, concerning issues such as marriage, maternity and women’s careers. It was called ‘What the men wrote and what they did not’. Both posts are part of my research project The Personal and the Political .
Part of the project is the recovery of what certain women wrote on the same questions. In particular, I focus on the writings of women close to the New Liberal men. One or two figures are already known, but most are not. To give some examples: Margaret Nevinson (wife of Henry Nevinson) wrote short stories for the suffrage press as well as a play. Henry Nevinson’s second wife, Evelyn Sharp edited the W.S.P.U. newspaper Votes for Women and was also a writer of short stories for children and adults. Brailsford’s wife, Jane Malloch, wrote letters to the press and a short story for Ford Madox Ford’s English Review. Graham Wallas’s wife Ada Wallas wrote short stories for magazines including The Yellow Book, as well as women’s history and an autobiography. Lucy Masterman wrote poetry. Florence Hobson wrote and published short stories. As well as the economic and social history she wrote with her husband John, Barbara Hammond wrote an unpublished novel.
The women’s writing can be contrasted with that of the men. The most obvious point is that the men wrote articles in The Nation and the women did not. The women were not part of what Hobhouse termed the ‘apostolic succession’ of Liberal men whose task it was to reinterpret liberalism in each generation.