Sylvia Pankhurst Natural born rebel

Rachel Holmes

Book - 2020

The definitive biography of Sylvia Pankhurst, a woman ahead of her times - political rebel, human rights champion and radical feminist. Born into one Britain's most famous activist families, Sylvia Pankhurst was a natural rebel; a talented artist, prolific writer and newspaper editor. A free spirit and radical visionary, history placed her in the shadow of her famous mother, Emmeline, and elder sister, Christabel. Yet Sylvia Pankhurst was the most revolutionary of them all. Sylvia found her voice fighting militantly for votes for women. Her commitment to equality caused her to serve multiple sentences in Holloway prison - where she was tortured. The vote was just the beginning of her lifelong defence of human rights, from her early war...nings of the rise of fascism in Europe, to her campaigning against racism and championing of the liberation struggles in Africa and India. Sylvia's adventures in America, Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe and East Africa made her a true internationalist. She was one of the great minds of the modern era, engaging with political giants, including Churchill, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, George Bernard Shaw, W.E.B. Du Bois and Haile Selassie. Her intimate life was no less controversial. The rupture between Sylvia, Emmeline and Christabel became worldwide news. Her love affair with the married Keir Hardie was one of the great political romances of the age, and she never married her life partner Silvio Corio, with whom she had a son at the age of forty-five. Acclaimed biographer Rachel Holmes interweaves the personal and political to reveal Sylvia Pankhurst as never before. This major new biography celebrates a life in resistance, painting a compelling portrait of one of the greatest unsung political figures of the twentieth century.

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
London ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Publishing 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Rachel Holmes (author)
Item Description
First published in Great Britain in 2020.
Physical Description
xxi, 949 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [843]-916) and index.
ISBN
9781408880418
9781408880425
  • Preface
  • Part 1. How To Make A Feminist 1882-1898
  • 1. Authority
  • 2. Red Doctor
  • 3. The Home News & Universal Mirror
  • 4. Family Party
  • 5. That Scarlet Woman
  • Part 2. Decade Of Dilemma 1898-1908
  • 6. Not Things Seen, Always the Things Imagined
  • 7. Pankhurst Hall
  • 8. Queer Hardie
  • 9. The Labour Party - Our Party ... a Reality at Last!
  • 10. Strange Tangle
  • Part 3. Rage Of Militancy 1908-1914
  • 11. The Art of Struggle
  • 12. Insurgence of Women
  • 13. O you daughters of the West!
  • 14. Bridge, Balls, Dinners
  • 15. American Letters
  • 16. Sex War
  • 17. Not as Suffragettes, But as Sisters
  • 18. Cat and Mouse
  • 19. Sylvia's Army
  • Part 4. In The Red Twilight 1914-1924
  • 20. Peacework
  • 21. The Dogs of War
  • 22. Mothers' Arms
  • 23. Welcome to the Soviets
  • 24. Anti-Parliamentarianism
  • 25. Sylvia's Communist Odyssey
  • 26. Comrade Pankhurst
  • 27. Discontent on the Lower Deck
  • 28. Left Childishness?
  • Part 5. Modern Times 1924-1945
  • 29. The Red Cottage Tea Room
  • 30. Free Love
  • 31. Fascism as It Is
  • 32. The National Anti-Fascist Weekly
  • 33. War in Woodford
  • Part 6. African Consciousness 1945-1960
  • 34. Suffragette & Son
  • 35. The Village
  • 36. Patriot
  • 37. Look for Me in a Whirlwind
  • 38. Ethiopia Observer
  • 39. Iron Lion Zion
  • Afterword: When I am Gone.
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Select Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, no name was more closely associated with citizen resistance and democratic socialism than that of Sylvia Pankhurst. As the child of crusading parents, reform and activism were mother's milk for Pankhurst. As a suffragette, socialist, artist, and activist, Pankhurst devoted every fiber of her being throughout her 78 years of life to conducting a concerted rebellion against authority, most famously as a frontline warrior in Britain's fight for women's equality. That commitment to women's rights naturally segued to equal fervor for racial and income equality, battles that pitted her against authoritarianism, misogyny, racism, and militarism in places as distant as Russia and Ethiopia. In a massive and massively detailed examination of Pankhurst's personal and political passions, Holmes paints a vivid portrait of a crusading pioneer for women's rights, placing Pankhurst at the epicenters of battles for human dignity throughout the modern era and around the globe. Sadly, Pankhurst's causes are still being fought on the world stage today; fortunately, Holmes' comprehensive biography can serve as inspiration for new generations of activists.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Biographer Holmes (Eleanor Marx: A Life) captures the full sweep of suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst's career and influence on 20th-century politics in this magnificent account. Born in 1882 in Manchester, England, Pankhurst learned about the radical causes of the late 19th century from her father, Richard, a lawyer and socialist, and mother, Emmeline, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1913, Pankhurst, who had trained to be an artist, broke from her mother's organization and founded a suffragette group more radically leftist in its political orientation but less violent in its tactics. WWI pushed Pankhurst into pacifism and revolutionary communism, cementing her estrangement from Emmeline and earning her a jail sentence for sedition. After women won the right to vote, Pankhurst, spurred on by her relationship with Silvio Corio, an Italian anarchist with whom she had an out-of-wedlock son at age 45, turned her attention to anti-fascism, anti-colonialism, and the Ethiopian independence movement. In the mid-1950s, she moved to Ethiopia at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie and received a full state funeral when she died there in 1960. Richly textured with historical details, crackling with the vibrant personalities of major and minor figures, and interspersed with clear-eyed, incisive analyses of Pankhurst's character and actions, this is a flat-out fabulous biography. History buffs will be mesmerized. (Dec.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Sylvia Pankhurst's (1882--1960) long and storied life as a political activist is explored in this new biography by Holmes (Eleanor Marx: A Life). Pankhurst's mother, Emmeline, founded the first women-only suffrage organization in England with her daughters but eventually expelled Sylvia for her radical support of the labor movement. This led Sylvia to start her own more leftist women suffrage organization, explore a career as an artist, and become intimately involved with politician and labor activist Keir Hardie. She later became a communist leader and anticolonial activist, living with Italian anarchist Silvio Corio and supporting Ethiopia's independence. Holmes includes some new finds from recently opened archives and delves deeper into Pankhurst's personal life than other biographers. But this lengthy book drifts back and forth chronologically, repeats many of the same stories, includes an exhaustive amount of political and historical background, and veers into long biographies of the hundreds of activists and politicians with whom Pankhurst interacted. VERDICT Pankhurst's life is ripe for discovery by new readers and a younger generation. However, this biography is often so dense that her story often gets lost within its pages.--Kate Stewart, Tucson

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