Helena Swanwick

Helena Swanwick (* 1864 in Munich ; † November 16, 1939 ) was a British feminist and pacifist .

October 1909

Life

Her father Oswald Sickert was a Danish painter, her mother Eleanor of English-Irish descent. Her brother was the well-known painter Walter Sickert . As a high school student, she read John Stuart Mill's books on the oppression of women. These influenced her path to becoming a feminist. In 1888 she married Frederick Swanwick and worked as a journalist. She was active in the British women's suffrage movement - and organized in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) - and was the editor of a weekly journal, The Common Cause , from 1909 to 1912 , and she was also a member of the Labor Party .

At the outbreak of World War I , she was part of the movement that broke with the NUWSS because of its pacifist views. After the war she retained her internationalist views, condemned the Versailles Treaty and was a delegate to the League of Nations in 1929 .

In 1939 she committed suicide .

literature

• Donald Mitchell: Against All Odds. The Life and Work of Helena Swanwick , Bristol: Silver Wood Books 2018, ISBN 978-1-78132-820-0 .

Web link

• http://spartacus-educational.com/Wswanwick.htm (English)