The diary of Beatrice Webb

This volume is the first of a four-volume collection that presents the diaries of English sociologist, economist, socialist and social reformer Beatrice Webb (1858-1943). In her diary Beatrice expressed her desire to write fully and creatively about her life and she kept her diary from 1873 until her death in 1943. In the diary Beatrice records the activities of her daily life, interactions with friends and family, and her most private thoughts and fears. This first volume of Webb's diary begins when she is fifteen, child of a cultivated and wealthy man who allowed his nine daughters a wide-ranging and eclectic education that was unusual for the times. Rejecting the path of successful marriage chosen by her sisters, she confronted the first great crisis of her life in her ill-starred passion for the politician Joseph Chamberlain. She sought refuge from that unhappy obsession in work with London's poor in the East End slums; then in 1890 she met Sidney Webb, civil servant and brilliant Fabian ideologist. Volume one ends with their marriage in 1892, an unlikely union that proved a remarkable success.