Henry Nevinson

Henry Woodd Nevinson (11 October 1856 – 9 November 1941) was an English war correspondent during the Second Boer War and World War I, a campaigning journalist exposing slavery in western Africa, political commentator and suffragist.[1]

Henry Woodd Nevinson (1856–1941), circa 1915

He was born in 1856 in Leicester, the son of solicitor George Nevinson and his wife, Maria Jane, née Woodd. [2] Nevinson studied at Shrewsbury School and later at Christ Church, Oxford.[1] At Oxford, he came under the influence of John Ruskin's ideas.[1] He worked as a missionary at Toynbee Hall in London's East End.[3] After this he spent some time in Jena studying German culture. The result of this was in 1884 Nevinson published his first book, Herder and his Times, one of the first studies of Johann Gottfried Herder in English.[1][4] In the 1880s Nevinson became a socialist; he befriended Peter Kropotkin and Edward Carpenter, and in 1889 joined the Social Democratic Federation.[1]

Reporting

In 1897 Nevinson became the Daily Chronicle's correspondent in the Greco-Turkish War. He was known for his reporting on the Second Boer War, and slavery in Angola in 1904–1905,[5] and on India for the Manchester Guardian.[3] In 1914 he co-founded the Friends' Ambulance Unit and later in World War I was a war correspondent, being wounded at Gallipoli.[6]

Advocacy

He was hired by Harper's Monthly Magazine to investigate rumours of a trade in slaves from Angola to the cocoa plantations of São Tomé. After a 450-mile journey inland, he uncovered a trail of people being handed over to settle debts or seized by Portuguese agents and taken in shackles to the coastal towns. Once there he was enraged to find that Portuguese officials "freed" them and changed their status to that of voluntary workers who agreed to go to São Tomé for five years. Despite ill health so severe that he feared he had been poisoned Nevinson followed the slaves' journey to São Tomé. He found conditions on the plantations so harsh that one in five workers died each year. His account was serialised in the magazine from August 1905 and published as "A Modern Slavery" by Harper and Bros in 1906.

He was also a suffragist, is one of the founders in 1907 of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, and was later a member[7] and Chairman of the militant Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement.[8][9]

Reviewing Nevinson's book, More Changes, More Chances (1925), E. M. Forster described the book as "exciting", and noting that Nevinson had joined the British Labour Party, stated: "He has brought to the soil of his adoption something that transcends party- generosity, recklessness, a belief in conscience joined to a mistrust of principles".[10]

In Nancy Cunard's pamphlet Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, Nevinson gave his support to the Spanish Republicans and stated "I detest the cruel systems of persecution and suppression now existing under Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia".[11]

Family

He married Margaret Wynne Jones; the artist Christopher Nevinson was their son. During their marriage he had a long term affair with Nora Dryhurst which ended in 1912.[12] Shortly after the death of his wife, Margaret, in 1933, Henry married his long-time friend and lover, fellow suffragist, Evelyn Sharp. He died in 1941, aged 85.

Bibliography

See also

References

Notes
  1. "Nevinson, Henry Woodd" by H. N. Brailsford, revised by Sinead Agnew. Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography : From the Earliest Times to the year 2000. Editors, H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 019861411X (Volume 40, pp. 551-2).
  2. https://www.oxforddnb.com/browse;jsessionid=02E61749F824A29AE0891E43EEF02139?gender=Male&isQuickSearch=true&pageSize=20&sort=titlesort&t_0=OccupationsAndRealmsOfRenown%3A1835&t_1=OccupationsAndRealmsOfRenown%3A1582
  3. Atkinson, Diane (2018). Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes. London: Bloomsbury. p. 171. ISBN 9781408844045. OCLC 1016848621.
  4. F M Barnard, J.G. Herder on social and political culture London, Cambridge U.P., 1969. (p. xii)
  5. "NEVINSON, H. W." Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1295.
  6. See Nevinson's Fire of Life pp.304–318 for his time at the Dardanelles; he doesn't mention his own wound.
  7. Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement (1911). First Annual Report (Report). London: Women's Printing Society.
  8. Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement (1912). Second Annual Report (Report). London: Women's Printing Society.
  9. Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement (1913). Third Annual Report (Report). London: Women's Printing Society.
  10. E. M. Forster, "Literature or Life?" The New Leader, 2 October 1925. Reprinted in P. N. Furbank (ed.), The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings. London: Andre Deutsch, 1998. ISBN 0233991689 (pp. 89-93)
  11. Nancy Cunard, Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War. Left Review, 1937. (p.21)
  12. John, A.V. (2006). War, Journalism and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Times of Henry W. Nevinson. I.B.Tauris. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-85771-783-2. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
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