Isabel Giberne Sieveking

Contents

Isabel Giberne Sieveking (c. 1857 – 30 March 1936) was a British suffragette, historian and writer.[1]

Early life

Sieveking was born in 1857 in Epsom, Surrey, and was raised as a devout Catholic.[2] She was the youngest of the four children born to George Sieveking and Maria Sieveking Giberne.[3] Her first cousin was the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.[4][5]

Marriage

When she was 33 years old, Sieveking married 25 year old timber-merchant Edward Gustavus Sieveking on 25 April 1891.[3] She referred to him as "dear Ted".[1] They lived in Harrow and Hastings.[6]

They had four children:[6]

  • Valentine Edgar Sieveking (1892–1918)[7]
  • Geoffrey Edward Sieveking (1893–1979)
  • Lancelot Giberne Sieveking (1896–1972)[8][9]
  • Elinor Beatrice Sieveking (1898–1989)

Sieveking's public views on marriage were radical and she wrote to the Hastings and St. Leonard's Observer on 3 December 1910 that "The highest ideal was not marriage. It could not be when sex was purely temporal."[10] In the 12 July 1913 issue of the suffragette magazine The Awakener, Sieveking argued that marriage cannot satisfy women's desires for close companionship in an article titled "The Celibate Englishwoman."[11]

Activism

Sieveking was a suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She participated in the 1911 census boycott, with the enumerator writing on her return: "Husband had left the town when I called and the wife, who is a suffragette, refused to sign as correct".[6] She also wrote to local newspapers and got caught up in the 1913 Hastings riots when antisuffragists attacked a group of suffrage campaigners on the seafront.[3]

When Levetleigh House in St. Leonards-on-Sea was burned down by suffragettes, Sieveking was not involved, but did support the act.[12]

She was the secretary of the local branch of the Parents' National Educational Union.

Works

Sieveking was also a historian and writer who published works concerning historic individuals[13] and the Indian Rebellion of 1857:

  • Memoirs and Letters of Francis W. Newman, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. (1909)
  • A Turning Point in the Indian Mutiny (1910),[14] dedicated to Thomas Gisborne Gordon
  • Autumn Impressions of the Gironde (1910)
  • The Memoirs of Sir Horace Mann, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co (1912)
  • The Great Postponement (1912)

She also published in academic journals such as The Antiquary.[15][16]

Death

Sieveking died on 30 March 1936 at Queen’s Gate, Kensington, London, England.[6][17]

References

  1. 1.[1.2]Wojciechowski, Miranda (1 November 2017). "The (Extra)ordinary Activism of Isabel de Giberne Sieveking". Libraries of Indiana University Bloomington. Retrieved 2 November 2024.
  2. 2."A Conventional Radical · Isabel de Giberne Sieveking". Omeka. Retrieved 2 November 2024.
  3. 3.[3.2][3.3]O'Hagan, Lauren Alex (2021). "The Upper-Middle Classes". The Sociocultural Functions of Edwardian Book Inscriptions, Taking a Multimodal Ethnohistorical Approach. New York: Routledge. pp. 111–112. doi:10.4324/9781003020356. ISBN 978-1-003-02035-6.
  4. 4.Feeney, Joseph J. (3 March 2016). The Playfulness of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Routledge. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-317-02119-3.
  5. 5.Stapleton, Julia (1 August 2024). G K Chesterton at the Daily News, Part II, vol 6: Literature, Liberalism and Revolution, 1901-1913. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-24884-3.
  6. 6.[6.2][6.3][6.4]Jackson, Linda (2014). "Sieveking, Isabel Giberne". The Epsom and Ewell History Explorer. Retrieved 2 November 2024.
  7. 7.O'Connor, Mike (1 January 2006). Airfields and Airmen: The Channel Coast. Pen & Sword Books Limited. ISBN 978-1-84415-258-2.
  8. 8.Siepmann, C. A. (6 January 2011) [23 September 2004]. "Sieveking, Lancelot de Giberne (1896–1972), writer and radio and television producer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31683. Retrieved 3 November 2024. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  9. 9.Hendy, David (1 June 2013). "Painting with Sound: The Kaleidoscopic World of Lance Sieveking, a British Radio Modernist". Modern British History. 24 (2): 169–200. doi:10.1093/tcbh/hws021. ISSN 2976-7016.
  10. 10."Marriage, Love, and Friendship · A Conventional Radical · Isabel de Giberne Sieveking". Omeka. Retrieved 23 March 2025.
  11. 11.""The Celibate Englishwoman" · A Conventional Radical · Isabel de Giberne Sieveking". Omeka. Retrieved 23 March 2025.
  12. 12.Rees, Gareth E. (22 April 2021). "Radical Victorian Hastings & The Birth of Women's Suffrage". Unofficial Britain. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  13. 13.Sadlier, Darlene J. (9 August 2019). The Lilly Library from A to Z: Intriguing Objects in a World-Class Collection. Indiana University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-253-04268-2.
  14. 14.Paul, E. Jaiwant (1 August 2011). The Greased Cartridge: The Heroes and Villains of 1857-58. Roli Books Private Limited. ISBN 978-93-5194-010-4.
  15. 15.Sievking, Isabel Giberne. (1906) "English Pageants of the Streets." The Antiquary 2(12): 464-468.
  16. 16.Sievking, Isabel Giberne. (1907) "An Old Cornish Village." The Antiquary, 3(10), pp. 382-385.
  17. 17.A Life of Service: An Appreciation of the Life of Madame Sieveking. Hastings and St. Leonard's Observer. 18 April 1936.