Mabel Holland Thomas Grave, the Anarchist Pastoral

Constance  Bantman; Mike Jones

Mabel Holland Thomas Grave, the Anarchist Pastoral

Constance Bantman University of Surrey, U.K.
Mike Jones Independent

Abstract

Mabel Holland Thomas (1861-1929), later Grave, is a quintessential example of an anarchist woman with an eclectic body of work, whose manifold contribution has been largely overlooked or considered through the prism of her romantic association with a leading figure of the French and international anarchist movement, Jean Grave (1857-1939). This article offers an analytical biographical account emphasizing her privileged and artistic family background and Welshness, exploring how they connected with her later embrace of anarchism through the themes of nature and the landscape, social justice, education, and feminism.

Author Biographies

Constance Bantman, University of Surrey, U.K.

Constance Bantman is Associate Professor in French at the University of Surrey, UK. Her work focuses on the history of the French anarchist movement (late 1870s-1930s), with an emphasis on exile, transnational networks and print culture. Her books include The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation (Liverpool UP, 2013) and Jean Grave and the Networks of French Anarchism (1854-1939). Her next book, Femmes de Revolution: Portraits d'activistes qui ont changé le monde, will be published by Le Seuil in early 2025.

Mike Jones, Independent

Mike Jones was made an Honorary Research fellow by the University of Liverpool when he retired from a professional life working with children and young people. He continued to work in a voluntary capacity for a charitable organisation which operated Glyn Melin, a house in Abersoch, North Wales for the benefit of families, children and youth. The house had once been home to Heulwen and Hedydd Isambard Owen - the nieces of Mabel Holland and Jean Grave. Mike's research for his publication Echoes of the Past: The Misses Isambard Owen led him to reflect on how Heulwen and Hedydd, born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, negotiated and navigated their dreams and creative ambitions as women, as well as the women in their lives who influenced and guided them from a young age - their mother Ethel and her sisters. Such was their affection for their Aunt Mabel that that they referred to her as their second mother - their Mammie Maia. Ethel nursed
Mabel during her last days in 1929 and Heulwen and Hedydd remained in contact with Jean Grave after the death of their own parents - visiting him at his home in 1939 shortly before his death and their subsequent internment until France was liberated in 1944.

A propaganda image of a hand holding back the jaundiced, bloodied hand of fascism from grasping the globe

Published

2024-11-25

Issue

Vol. 2024 No. 2 (2024): Anarchist Antiauthoritarian and Antifascist Cultural Politics

Section

Articles

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