Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel

by Rachel Holmes

Overview

'A wonderful book … Holmes sublimely illuminates Sylvia's extraordinary life' The Times

'A masterpiece' Vanessa Redgrave
_______________

Born into one of Britain's most famous activist families, Sylvia Pankhurst was a natural rebel. A free spirit and radical visionary, history placed her in the shadow of her famous mother, Emmeline, and elder sister, Christabel. Yet artist Sylvia Pankhurst was the most revolutionary of them all.

Sylvia found her voice fighting for votes for women, imprisoned and tortured in Holloway prison more than any other suffragette. But the vote was just the beginning of her lifelong defence of human rights. She engaged with political giants, warned of fascism in Europe, championed the liberation struggles in Africa and India and became an Ethiopian patriot. Her intimate life was no less controversial. The rupture between Sylvia, Emmeline and Christabel became worldwide news, while her romantic life drew public speculation and condemnation.

Rachel Holmes interweaves the personal and political in an extraordinary celebration of a life in resistance, painting a compelling portrait of one of the greatest unsung political figures of the twentieth century.

'A monument to an astonishing life' Daily Telegraph, Best Biographies of 2020

'A robust and sensitive biography' Sunday Times, History Books of the Year

'A moving, powerful biography' Guardian

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408880432
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	976
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Rachel Holmes is the author of Eleanor Marx: A Life, The Secret Life of Dr James Barry and The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman. She is co-editor of Fifty Shades of Feminism and I Call Myself A Feminist. She lives in London.
Rachel Holmes is the author of four biographies; The Secret Life of James Barry, The Hottentot Venus, Eleanor Marx: A Life and Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel. All are published by Bloomsbury. She has also edited collections of political writing, published as a journalist and worked as an academic, activist and literary programmer. Between Two Fires is her second work for the stage. She co-commissioned Sixty Six Books: 21st Century Writers Speak to the King James Bible (Oberon, 2011), with Josie Rourke and Chris Haydon.

Table of Contents

Preface xii

Part 1 How To Make A Feminist 1882-1898 1

1 Authority 3

2 Red Doctor 21

3 The Home News & Universal Mirror 49

4 Family Party 69

5 That Scarlet Woman 97

Part 2 Decade Of Dilemma 1898-1908 115

6 Not Things Seen, Always the Things Imagined 117

7 Pankhurst Hall 135

8 Queer Hardie 163

9 The Labour Party - Our Party … a Reality at Last! 181

10 Strange Tangle 205

Part 3 Rage Of Militancy 1908-1914 229

11 The Art of Struggle 231

12 Insurgence of Women 253

13 O you daughters of the West! 283

14 Bridge, Balls, Dinners 301

15 American Letters 317

16 Sex War 339

17 Not as Suffragettes, But as Sisters 351

18 Cat and Mouse 381

19 Sylvia's Army 407

Part 4 In The Red Twilight 1914-1924 427

20 Peacework 429

21 The Dogs of War 447

22 Mothers' Arms 461

23 Welcome to the Soviets 485

24 Anti-Parliamentarianism 509

25 Sylvia's Communist Odyssey 527

26 Comrade Pankhurst 545

27 Discontent on the Lower Deck 565

28 Left Childishness? 589

Part 5 Modern Times 1924-1945 605

29 The Red Cottage Tea Room 607

30 Free Love 627

31 Fascism as It Is 657

32 The National Anti-Fascist Weekly 673

33 War in Woodford 703

Part 6 African Consciousness 1945-1960 731

34 Suffragette & Son 733

35 The Village 749

36 Patriot 767

37 Look for Me in a Whirlwind 779

38 Ethiopia Observer 799

39 Iron Lion Zion 815

Afterword: When I am Gone 837

Abbreviations 842

Notes 843

Select Bibliography 907

Index 917

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/07/2020

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.)

Publishers Weekly

"Pankhurst, a daughter of Britain’s leading suffragist, came by her radical politics naturally. But as this absorbing biography shows, she embraced a precociously modern awareness of gender and class, campaigning tirelessly for the rights of women and workers." - New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

"[A] monumental biography . . . Holmes’s effort finally gives Pankhurst her due, bringing to life a woman with a ‘terrifying capacity for martyrdom’ and a profoundly forward-thinking conception of human rights." - The New Yorker

"[An] excellent and admiring new biography . . . [Holmes’] command of the material, which covers not only suffrage but Pankhurst’s involvement in everything from anti-war protest to political turmoil in Russia, India, and Ethiopia (Pankhurst led international protests when fascist Italy invaded the African kingdom), is impressive. The author vividly portrays both the sweep of events and her subject’s inner conflicts. Indeed, Holmes excels in showing how Pankhurst's mental turmoil both shaped and drove her, leading to a remarkably forward-thinking understanding of the connections between gender, class, and race." - Wall Street Journal

“Magnificent . . . 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.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“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 . . . Holmes' comprehensive biography can serve as inspiration for new generations of activists.” —Booklist

“A spectacular work by one of the most accomplished biographers writing today. Rachel Holmes's Sylvia peels away the mystique and misinformation surrounding the life of perhaps the most interesting and complex of the mighty Pankhurst women.” —Anita Anand, author of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

“No one writes history quite like Rachel Holmes with her astounding gift for animating the past and revealing its uncanny contemporary relevance . . . Sylvia Pankhurst tells an epic tale of the last century that speaks so presciently to current dark times. The intimate, national and global adventures of this great and brave woman are recounted with color and precision . . . All of human life is here in a perfect read for the hard season to come.” —Shami Chakrabarti, author of On Liberty

"Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel is an extraordinary work, a vital and necessary intervention, and an urgent read for our times. Rachel Holmes has written the definitive biography of one of the twentieth century’s political giants. . . . [The book] is full of honesty and integrity that shine from every page and reach straight to the reader’s heart." - Jacobin

"Holmes is such an engaging writer, and the stories she recounts are so compelling, that reading this massive tome turns out to be a massive pleasure. . . . Today’s activists could benefit from reading this detailed and riveting account of a woman whose life exemplified an unwavering commitment to ‘deeds, not words.’ However, one need not be an activist to find this book a fascinating exploration of the not-so-distant past." - Historical Novel Society

“Captures vividly the drama of a woman with a hunger for the world who did her damnedest to live on the largest terms possible, and to a very considerable degree succeeded.” —New York Times Book Review on ELEANOR MARX, Editors' Choice

“A powerful portrait of a radical mind in all its high-keyed intensity.” —Wall Street Journal on ELEANOR MARX

“Superb . . . I doubt the reader will close this brilliant biography unmoved by this extraordinary woman's life and untroubled by the inevitable questions it raises about global capitalism now.” —Jeanette Winterson, Daily Telegraph on ELEANOR MARX

“Eleanor Marx is both a challenging and a stimulating subject for a biographer. In this widely researched and passionately written book, Rachel Holmes has found an original way of presenting her.” —Michael Holroyd on ELEANOR MARX

“Thanks to Holmes' fresh and vital style—not to mention her endearing partisanship—Eleanor Marx: A Life reads less like a biography than a 19th century novel.” —Financial Times on ELEANOR MARX

From the Publisher

11/01/2020

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

Library Journal