Böcker av Beatrice Webb

"I will assume that [...] we accept as a state of society [...] in which all citizens will serve the community with whole-heartedness, the community remunerating them, in return, according to the personal expenditure needful to the full and free use of their physical and mental faculties."-Beatrice Potter Webb, The Co-operative Movement in Great BritainAn important study of social history and industry, The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain (1891) is one of Beatrice Potter Webb's earliest works. After first moving to London, Potter Webb helped a cousin research labor conditions there. This led her to become a "co-operative federalist." Her book is an apology for this political movement that supported the formation of consumer co-operative societies which, in turn, would acquire farms and factories its members could use to obtain food and supplies.

"It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity." -Beatrice Potter Webb, My ApprenticeshipIn My Apprenticeship (1926), Beatrice Potter Webb provided the first of several memoirs based on diaries she kept. It begins the story of her life starting at the age of 4 and describes her development as a social activist and writer, concluding with the events immediately preceding her marriage to Sidney Webb in 1892 at age 36. Having made a commitment to social improvement while still in school, Beatrice Potter described the stress she had to endure as a woman and a professional who abandoned a life of abundance to work in the squalor of London's East End.

This early work by Beatrice Webb was originally published in the early 20th century and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Our Partnership' contains details on the wealth of topics that Beatrice and her husband, Sidney, worked on together. Beatrice Potter Webb was born in Gloucester, England in 1858. Educated at home by a governess, she also travelled widely and, due to this, gained a keen interest in sociology. Using the valuable resource of her father's library, studying became a passion, and she soon began to conduct her own sociological investigations. However, it was a time she spent with relatives in Lancashire, that Beatrice had her first glimpse of the working classes and their way of life. In 1913, along with her husband, Beatrice created the New Statesman, which grew to become an incredibly influential publication. They also founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895. The Webb's, together, wrote eleven volumes of work which arguably shaped the way subsequent scholars thought about sociology.

In Methods of Social Study, pioneers 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.