Janet Ashbee: Love, Marriage, and the Arts and Crafts Movement

Front Cover
Syracuse University Press, Apr 1, 2002 - Biography & Autobiography - 276 pages
C. R. Ashbee was, some would say, the key man in the British Arts and Crafts movement during the early decades of the twentieth century. Regarded as heir to William Morris in political belief and design reform, Ash bee (and his Guild of Handicraft) gained international fame in his own time and remains a legend today. While much has been written about him, little has been said of his wife. Now Felicity Ashbee breaks the silence in a compelling book about her mother. The book depicts Janet Ashbee as a gifted woman of emotional warmth, strength, and unconventionality, all of which enhanced her husband's work. An accomplished writer and thinker in her own right, Janet Ashbee's life revolved around great historic issues that still resonate today: the socially conscious Arts and Crafts movement, the role of women in contemporary affairs, and embattled ethnic relationships in the Middle East-not to mention marriage and sexual orientation, predicated upon her husband's vibrant and well-known homosexuality. A book of rare insight and significance, Janet Ashbee sheds welcome light on the Arts and Crafts movement and on women in oft-romanticized Victorian and Edwardian British culture.
 

Selected pages

Contents

BEGINNINGS 18771895
1
DAUGHTER AT HOME 18951897
11
COMRADE WIFE 18971898
23
THE HOUSE WITH THE COPPER DOOR 18981900
34
THE LADY OF THE GUILD 18981900
45
AMERICAN BLOSSOMING 19001901
54
THE LAST OF LONDON 19O119O2
67
WHITECHAPEL TO CAMELOT 19O219O3
79
CAMPDEN TO JERUSALEMVIA CAIRO 19171918
147
THE GOLDEN BOWL FILLED WITH SCORPIONS 1918
158
ONCE IN ROYAL DAVIDS CITY 1919
167
ADMINISTRATION WIFE 192O1921
181
TWO HOUSES 1921
188
IF I FORGET THEE O JERUSALEM 1922
197
RESHUFFLING THE PACK 19221929
203
DOVES ESCAPING 19291939
216

THE FIRST SHADOWS 19031905
92
THE BULGING RED BOOK 19O119O8
105
AMPUTATION 19081910
119
HOPE FULFILLED 19111914
128
FAMILY AND WAR 19141916
137
WIFE TO WIDOW 19391942
228
COMRADEGRANDMOTHER 19421961
230
SUGGESTED READING
239
INDEX
241
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

Felicity Ashbee is the author of scholarly articles in art history and nineteenth and twentieth-century material culture. She is eighty-eight years old and this is her first full-length book. Alan Crawford is the author of C. R. Ashbee, Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist.

Bibliographic information