Volume 48, Number 14 · September 20, 2001
Living for the Future
By Stuart Hampshire
The Diaries of Beatrice Webb
edited by Norman MacKenzie and Jeanne MacKenzie, abridged by Lynn Knight, preface by Hermione Lee
Northeastern University Press, 630 pp., $45.00
Selected from the four volumes of Beatrice Webb's diaries and further abridged, this book is a brilliant enterprise. No other state or society has ever been so rich, so many-layered, so abundant in its moral and religious concerns and in scientific discovery as Great Britain between 1870 and 1914. About the fine arts, rising to a peak in Paris at that time, there is less to be said in these Jubilee years, and in fact very little is said about them in Beatrice Webb's diaries. She and her husband Sidney took a large part in building up the Labour Party and the Fabian Society and in founding the London School of Economics, and together they wrote many books and articles. She was a woman of masterful intellect and great practical good sense, but she had a rather starved imagination, as she herself recognized.
Review, 2376 words
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