My Apprenticeship has long been cited as an important and fascinating source for students of social attitudes and conditions in late Victorian Britain, and this new paperback edition makes it once more generally available. Beatrice Webb, the eighth of the nine daughters of the railway magnate Richard Potter, was an exceptionally able person, with a zest for observation, a knack for pointed comment, and a habit of self-examination - all of which gifts she put to good account in the private diary she kept all her life and in this brilliant volume of autobiography which she based on that diary. It tells the story of a craft and a creed, of a withdrawn but talented girl, growing up in a prosperous household, who turned to social investigation and social reform, moving between the two starkly contrasted worlds of West End smart society and East End squalor. She served a hard apprenticeship, as a woman as well as a professional worker, and in a new introduction to this edition Norman MacKenzie describes the severe personal stresses which lay behind her life of dedication to social improvement, particularly her frustrated passion for Joseph Chamberlain and the troubled courtship which preceded her marriage to Sidney Webb. This volume ends on the eve of that marriage, when she was about to begin her famous and astonishingly productive collaboration with her husband. As historians, publicists and Fabian politicians the Webbs were pioneers of the modern age. The ensuring volume, which chronicles their mature career and was appropriately titled Our Partnership, is also published by the Cambridge University Press in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science.

My Apprenticeship (Penguin Modern Classics)

Biographies & Memoirs

Webb, Beatrice

Community & Culture

Panguin

Indian Diary

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the Fabian socialists who founded the London School of Economics and the New Statesman, traveled extensively in India for four months in 1911-12. During this period, they recorded their observations in a diary kept by Beatrice. Remaining virtually unnoticed for seventy-five years, the resulting Indian Diary did not appear in print for the first time until 1987. The Webbs surpass the writings of their near contemporaries, E.M. Forster and J.R. Ackerley, in sharpness of observation and range of interests. Along with the normal traveler's curiosity with historical sites and people, the Webbs reveal a serious interest in India's politics, religions, philosophies, and associated institutions. Upon arrival in India, they attend the twenty-sixth session of the Indian National Congress and meet political figures such as Gokhale, Tilak, Annie Besant, and C.F. Andrews. They stay with maharajas, nawabs, begums, other residents, and ICS officials. They visit madrassas and gurukulas, Arya and Brahmo Samajists, Mrs. Besant's College (now the Banaras Hindu University) in Banaras, and other learning institutions in Delhi and Poona. They camp in the hinterland with district officers in order to see the underside of imperial rule; watch feudalism in operation within the princely states; and travel to the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad to witness unfamiliar rituals and mass devotion. Niraja Gopal Jayal has provided a detailed introduction and helpful notes which clarify the Webbs' whereabouts during their journey. Indian Diary remains a work of both considerable documentary value and great literary charm.

Oxford University Press

English Local Government: Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes

Politics & Social Sciences

Webb, Sidney

Politics & Government

Franklin Classics

The Truth About Soviet Russia

History

Sidney Sidney

Russia

English Prisons Under Local Government (Routledge Revivals)

Americas

Routledge

Originally published in 1963, this volume is devoted to an analysis of the organisation of the Commissioners of Sewers, the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor, the Turnpike Trusts and the Improvement Commissioners, and depicts the important development of these bodies during the eighteenth century. By examining the constitutional features of these statutory authorities Mr. & Mrs. Webb support their main contention that here are to be found the beginnings of most of the Local Government services of the present day. But to most readers the chief interest of this volume will lie in the last two chapters, which analyse the whole development of English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. This description of how the 'Old Principles' between 1689 and 1835 were gradually superseded by the 'New Principles' affords a convenient summary of the first four volumes.

Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes: With a Summary of the Development of Local Government Structure (Routledge Revivals)

Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes (Routledge Revivals)

The Manor and the Borough (Routledge Revivals)

Originally published in 1963, this book examines the English Local Government, and more specifically, the Manor and the Parish, considering the various exemptions, immunities and franchises which enabled the inhabitants of particular localities to exclude the authority of the county at large, or that of one or other of its officers, and thereby enjoy, within their own favoured areas, some peculiar forms of self-government. The book includes chapters on the city and borough of Westminster, the boroughs of Wales, administration by municipal democracies and the municipal revolution.

Methods of Social Study

In Methods of Social Study Sidney and Beatrice Webb describe in detail how they conducted their investigations into social history and institutions - from the collection, recording and classification of the data (both documentary and oral), through the processes of hypothesis and analysis, down to the preparation of the final report. The Webbs were in many respects pioneers, and what they achieved and the way in which they achieved it are of an importance that has been increasingly recognised as the passage of times gives us perspective. Their constant concern was to ensure that their work would be 'scientific'. They stress the need in scientific research for complete objectivity, to be achieved in their case by keeping their historical and sociological studies wholly separate from their political writings. Because the first drafts for the book were made by Beatrice in 1921 and the final text was written by Sidney in 1931/2, one can also see expressed here, more clearly than elsewhere, the different temperaments of the two collaborators.

Social Sciences

Cambridge University Press

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