Louisa Sarah Bevington
Louisa Sarah Bevington was a notable Victorian-era poet and political thinker, born on May 14, 1845, in Battersea, England, as the eldest of eight children in a Quaker family. She displayed a passion for nature and poetry from a young age, often writing on scientific and religious themes. Influenced by Herbert Spencer and his ideas on Social Darwinism, Bevington's work evolved to encompass philosophical concepts related to evolution and Transcendentalism. Her first major collection of poetry, *Key-Notes*, was published in 1876 under the pseudonym Arbor Leigh, reflecting her engagement with contemporary intellectual currents.
Throughout her life, Bevington transitioned from her Quaker roots towards atheism and anarchism, advocating for radical social change and the abolition of government and private property. Her writings increasingly focused on political and social issues, criticizing the injustices of Victorian society. Bevington's perspectives on anarchism led her to argue for the use of violence as a means to achieve her goals. Despite facing health challenges, she continued to write until her death on November 28, 1895. Today, Louisa Sarah Bevington is recognized for her contributions to both poetry and political discourse during a transformative era in British history.
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Subject Terms
Louisa Sarah Bevington
Nonfiction Writer
- Born: May 14, 1845
- Birthplace: St. John's Hill, Battersea, Surrey, England
- Died: November 28, 1895
- Place of death: Willesden, Middlesex, England
Biography
Louisa Sarah Bevington was born on May 14, 1845, at St. John’s Hill, Battersea, England, the eldest of eight children, seven of whom were girls. Her Quaker parents, Alexander and Louisa (De Horne) Bevington, encouraged her love for observing nature and writing poetry. Many of her early poems were about scientific and religious topics. Eventually, Bevington came under the influence of Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionary view of Social Darwinism colored her adult thinking.
In 1871, Bevington published some of her religious poetry under her initials instead of her name in The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, a Quaker publication. She brought out her first major collection of poems, Key-Notes, in 1876. This collection appeared under Bevington’s pseudonym Arbor Leigh (alluding to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”) and included several poems philosophically based on Charles Darwin’s evolutionary thought and author Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism. In that same year, Spencer asked Bevington for four more poems on evolution, which appeared in January,1878, in the American journal Popular Science Monthly. Spencer’s aid and promotion of Bevington’s work eventually led to her recognition both in poetic and scientific circles, and her first volume of poems was reissued under her own name in 1879. She also began writing nonfiction articles, primarily concerning evolution, again at Spencer’s request.
Shortly after publishing her second volume of poems in 1882, Bevington visited Germany. There she met Munich artist Ignatz Felix Guggenberger, whom she married in 1883. In less than eight years, the marriage ended; by 1890, Bevington had returned to London and continued writing under her maiden name, never using the name Guggenberger for her public writings. At this time she also met Charlotte Wilson, the only woman on the first executive committee of the socialistic Fabian Society. Bevington became an exponent of Fabian views, arguing for the abolition of both government and private property.
Bevington by this time had renounced her earlier Quaker roots, describing herself as an atheist and an anarchist, and her poetry increasingly became concerned with political and social causes. She also wrote many treatises and articles promoting her anarchist views and denouncing what she perceived as the injustices of late Victorian England. Further rejecting her parents’ Quakerism, Bevington began to advocate the use of violence in furthering anarchistic goals; for example, in Anarchism and Violence, published posthumously in 1896 in Liberty: A Journal of Free Communism, Bevington argued, “Can a real Anarchist—a man whose creed is Anarchism—be at the same time a person who deliberately injures, or tries to injure, persons or property? I, for one, have no hesitation in saying that, if destitute because of monopoly, he can.”
Bevington continued writing and working for her political goals despite severely failing health caused by heart disease and dropsy. In her final year of life, she published her third and last collection of poetry, Liberty Lyrics. She died at the age of fifty on November 28, 1895, in Willesen, Middlesex, England. Bevington has been remembered both as a Victorian era poet and a political polemicist.