Clementina Black

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Standard Name: Black, Clementina
Birth Name: Clementina Maria Black
Nickname: Clemmy
Nickname: Clemmie
CB wrote on a range of topics across many genres. Her work included six novels, journal articles, short stories, translations, plays, children's literature, and over seventy essays. She edited several journals which emerged from the late Victorian feminist movement, and wrote prolifically on the rights of the working classes and the need for trade unions.
Broomfield, Andrea, and Sally Mitchell, editors. Prose by Victorian Women. Garland, 1996.
600
She also took pains to get the voices and stories of working-class women into print.
Title page of Clementina Black's second novel, "Orlando", 1879 (1880 on title-page), vol. 1. This story contrasts a lost world of romance with a modern world in which women can be self-directed.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Edmund Spenser
Spenser's early women readers who were also poets seem to have included An Collins and Alicia D'Anvers . Later women writers in English either found him useful for raising the status of the romance genre...
Dedications Amy Levy
AL 's final volume of poems appeared posthumously under the title A London Plane-Tree, dedicated to Clementina Black .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
117
Education Constance Garnett
Constance's education began at home with her mother. Her elder sister Clementina taught her French and German. Her brothers were primarily responsible for her early introduction to mathematics and geography.
Glage, Liselotte. Clementina Black: A Study in Social History and Literature. Carl Winter, 1981.
16
Family and Intimate relationships Constance Garnett
Her sister Clementina became well known as a labour activist who fought for an improvement in women's rights and the rights of the working classes. She was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction...
Fictionalization Amy Levy
Quite apart from the biographical errors perpetrated by James Warwick Price , other myths about her were woven from her Jewishness and her suicide. Her friend Clementina Black (perhaps feeling that her reputation needed rescue)...
Friends, Associates Amy Levy
They included Olive Schreiner , the future Beatrice Webb , Dollie Maitland Radford , Margaret Harkness , Clementina Black (whose sister Constance had been a school friend of AL ), and Eleanor Marx . Through...
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Friends, Associates E. Nesbit
Through her political interests she got to know George Bernard Shaw (with whom she had a brief affair but a succeeding steady friendship), Sidney Webb , Sydney Olivier , Annie Besant , Eleanor Marx ,...
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Other women writers present at the meeting were Amy Levy , Mathilde Blind , Clementina Black , and Graham Tomson (later Rosamund Marriott Watson) .
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
331
Leisure and Society Amy Levy
She confessed also that to live like Clementina Black and her sister, doing their own housework, did not accord with my own Philistine, middle class notions of comfort.
qtd. in
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
255
She engaged, however, in socially provocative...
Occupation Amy Levy
She also this year helped Clementina Black in the office of the Women's Protective and Provident League .
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
179
politics Jane Hume Clapperton
Among others the committee also included Clementina Black , Beatrice Webb , and Maud Pember Reeves . It was attended by Emma Brooke and Isabella Ford .
Aberdeen, Ishbel Maria Gordon, Marchioness of, editor. Women in Industrial Life: The International Congress of Women of 1899. T. Fisher Unwin, 1900.
front matter
politics Isabella Ormston Ford
In the mid-1880s, under the influence of a family friend, Emma Paterson (the president of the Women's Protective and Provident League), IOF became involved with trade union organization in Leeds, with a particular...
politics Marie Belloc Lowndes
The letter challenged a recent antisuffragist manifesto, and stressed three points from Prime Minister Asquith 's statement to suffragists of 14 August. The points were that women had rendered as effective service to their country...
politics Edith Lyttelton
These women's pay, said the letter, was worse than the sweated wages universally condemned in pre-war days.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(15 February 1921): 6
Later that year, EL was also numbered among the women who tried to help...

Timeline

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .
Barwick, George. The Reading Room of the British Museum. Ernest Benn, 1929.
65, 71, 88, 102, 104-5, 136, 139
Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
69

Late 1889: An informal alliance was made between the...

Building item

Late 1889

An informal alliance was made between the Women's Co-operative Guild and the recently-formed Women's Trade Union Association , a sister organisation of working women.
Webb, Catherine. The Woman with the Basket: The History of the Women’s Co-operative Guild 1883-1927. Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Printing Works, 1927.
31
Forster, Margaret. Significant Sisters. Secker and Warburg, 1984.
prelims

26 November 1894: The Women's Industrial Council was formed...

Building item

26 November 1894

The Women's Industrial Council was formed in London (with Richard Haldane as President) from the earlier Women's Trade Union Association .
Mappen, Ellen. Helping Women at Work: The Women’s Industrial Council, 1889-1914. Hutchinson in association with the Explorations in Feminism Collective, 1985.
12, 60
Soldon, Norbert. Women in British Trade Unions 1874-1976. Gill and Macmillan, 1978.
29
Collette, Christine. For Labour and For Women: The Women’s Labour League, 1906-1918. Manchester University Press, 1989.
116
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
96

1906: The Anti-Sweating League was founded in England...

National or international item

1906

The Anti-Sweating League was founded in England to fight for improved conditions and better rights for sweated workers.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
80

15 April 1909: The Common Cause, the official organ of the...

Building item

15 April 1909

The Common Cause, the official organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , began weekly publication in Manchester.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
27
Mappen, Ellen. Helping Women at Work: The Women’s Industrial Council, 1889-1914. Hutchinson in association with the Explorations in Feminism Collective, 1985.
26
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

20 October 1909: The Trade Boards Act was passed—a success...

National or international item

20 October 1909

The Trade Boards Act was passed—a success for feminist campaigns against sweatshops and for minimum wages in the British clothing industry.
Law Reports: Statutes. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1866–2024.
(1909): 91, 101
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
777
Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. Virago Press, 1985.
76

30 January 1920: The Common Cause, the official organ of the...

Building item

30 January 1920

The Common Cause, the official organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , ended publication in London under this name, even as subtitle. The next number appeared as The Woman's Leader.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
27
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Texts

Black, Clementina. A New Way of Housekeeping. W. Collins Sons, 1918.
Black, Clementina. A Sussex Idyl. Samuel Tinsley, 1877.
Meyer, Adèle Levis, and Clementina Black. Makers of Our Clothes: A Case for the Trade Boards. Duckworth, 1909.
Black, Clementina, editor. Married Women’s Work. G. Bell and Sons, 1915.
Black, Clementina, editor. Married Women’s Work. Garland, 1980.
Black, Clementina. Mericas, and Other Stories. W. Satchell, 1880.
Black, Clementina. Orlando. Smith, Elder, 1879, 3 vols.
Black, Clementina, and Alfred George Gardiner. Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage. Duckworth, 1907.