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 It tells the story of a craft and a creed, of a withdrawn but talented girl, growing up in a prosperous household, who turned to social investigation and social reform, moving between the two starkly contrasted worlds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.

Existing studies of the Potter family tend to see Richard Potter through the lens of his most famous daughter, the socialist Beatrice Webb, or through Beatrice and her eight siblings, all girls. In this book, their father, whose business activities sustained the family’s upper-middle-class lifestyle and social position, is the subject of study in his own right. He was a new kind of businessman, a corporate capitalist, who operated on an international stage. This book looks inside the principal companies in which Potter was the chairman (the Great Western and Canadian Grand Trunk railways and the Gloucester Wagon Company) to assess his business acumen and his relationships with other leading business figures including Daniel Gooch, Edward Watkin and William Price. It also examines in detail Potter’s relationships with his wife and daughters, describing how he drew them into some of his key business decisions, and how he recognised the individuality of his daughters, encouraging them to read and think outside conventional boundaries, and to engage with famous intellectuals, most notably Herbert Spencer his life-long friend, who were part of the family circle, so shaping their lives as distinctive and strong adults. Beatrice had no doubt that he played a key part in shaping her professional life.

In this book, Sidney and Beatrice Webb describe in detail how they conducted their investigations into social history and institutions.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb are the most important British contributors to the socialist tradition. They had a hand in founding many of the institutions that form the fabric of British society; notably the Fabian society, the Labour Party, the London School of Economics, the New Statesman , the Political Quarterly and Tribune. This is the first authorized biography of the Webbs commissioned by the Passfield Trustees; this life of the 'oddest couple since Adam and Eve' differs from previous studies in considering their literary and institution-building accomplishments and not just their personal idiosyncrasies.

This early work by Beatrice and Sidney Webb was originally published in 1935 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? - Vol. I' is a work that details the social structure and principles of the USSR in the early part of the 20th century. Beatrice Potter Webb was born in Gloucester, England in 1858. Both her mother and brother died early in her childhood leaving her to be raised by her father, Richard Potter. He was a successful businessman with large railroad interests and many influential friends in politics and industry whose company the young Beatrice would become accustomed to. Upon reaching adulthood, Potter moved to London and helped her cousin, Charles, a social reformer, research his book The Life and Labour of the People in London. It was during this time that she was introduced to Sidney James Webb, who later became her husband and collaborator. The Webb's, together, wrote eleven volumes of work which arguably shaped the way subsequent scholars thought about sociology. They also collaborated on more than 100 books and articles on the conditions of factory workers, and the economic history of Britain, among other subjects.

Covers the period, 4 Jan. 1912-25 April 1912.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb were among the outstanding political personalities in the period 1890-1945. They were leading figures in the Fabian Society, prominent historians, and founders of the London School of Economics and the New Statesman. They exchanged letters with many of the leading figures in the political, intellectual and literary worlds of the time, among them Herbert Asquith, Ramsay MacDonald, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. Volume II of the letters covers the years between the Webb marriage and their return from Asia in 1912. They were the prime years of the partnership, in which the Webbs came to dominate the Fabian Society, founded the London School of Economics and launched their campaign for the reform of the Poor Law.