1890–1892 Courtship

Abstract

Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter met through Beatrice’s study of the Co-operative Movement. She felt that she needed more historical background to her co-operative studies and had asked one of her relations, Maggie Harkness, a journalist with radical connections, to recommend someone with the appropriate knowledge. Maggie suggested Sidney Webb. His name caught Beatrice’s attention because she had just finished reading the recently published Fabian Essays in Socialism and been particularly impressed by Sidney Webb’s contribution, which she thought ‘had the historic sense’. She was attracted, too, by Sidney’s confidence in the inevitability of his step-by-step socialism. Sidney, for his part, had remarked that, of the contributors to Charles Booth’s first volume, Beatrice Potter was the only one with literary talent.