Constance Webb

Constance Webb (born June 12, 1918 in Fresno , † March 28, 2005 in San Francisco ) was an American model , actress and author.

life and work

Constance Webb's parents were originally from Atlanta . She had five siblings. At the age of 15 she had already joined the American Socialist Party . She briefly attended Fresno State College and the University of California, Berkeley , where she studied history and literature, but did not graduate. She broke with the Socialist Party and joined the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party . In 1939, she met the Trinidadian author and critic CLR James , with whom she initially corresponded.

After their second marriage failed in the mid-1940s, Webb moved from California to New York City in 1944 . Here she worked as a model, including for Salvador Dalí and Tom Kelley , and as an actress. She had an affair with actor Jack Gilford and met James again. Through James she met the writers Richard Wright , Ralph Ellison and Chester Himes . She and James married in 1946. Their son, CLR Jr., named Nobbie, was born in 1949.

When James was arrested in 1952 during the McCarthy era and moved to the UK in 1953 , Webb stayed in New York with Nobbie. She made a living working as a secretary and businesswoman in a variety of industries. In the late 1950s she married the teacher Edward W. Pearlstien (1928–2001). In 1970 she moved to Los Angeles . During this time she worked as a writer, for example for Correspondence , the journal of the socialist Johnson-Forest Tendency , also known as Johnsonites. Her first book, a biography of Richard Wright, was published in 1968. Together with Pearlstien and Anette Welles, she founded Editorial Consultants, Inc., which produced annual reports. Between 1973 and her retirement in 1987, Webb worked as a technical writer for Bechtel Power Corporation in San Francisco.

In retirement, Webb focused on writing. She edited correspondence with CLR James. An autobiography appeared in 2003 under the title Not Without Love. Memoirs (2003). The Nobbie Stories for Children and Adults she had collected were published posthumously by CLR James.

Fonts

• What next for Richard Wright? , [Atlanta, Ga.] 1949.
• with Molly Ramolla: Fences. Editorial Consultants, San Francisco 1976.
• Richard Wright. A biography. Putnam, New York 1968.
• Changing scenes. Minerva Press, London 1998, ISBN 0754100170 .
• Not without love. Memoirs. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 2003, ISBN 1584653019 .
• with Anna Grimshaw (Ed.): Special Delivery. The Letters of CLR James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948. Blackwell, Oxford 1996, ISBN 1557866279 .
• with Anna Grimshaw (Ed.): The Nobbie Stories for Children and Adults. Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Neb. 2006, ISBN 9780803226081 .

literature

• Constance Webb. Writer Wife of CLR James . In: The Guardian , April 15, 2005.

Web links

• Constance Webb papers, 1918-2005 bulk 1939-2002 , Columbia University Libraries. Archival Collections.