Harriet Shaw Weaver (1 September 1876 – 14 October
1961) was a
political activist and a
magazine editor. She
also became the
patron of
James Joyce.
Harriet
Shaw Weaver was born in Frodsham
, Cheshire
, the
daughter of Frederic Poynton Weaver, a doctor, and Mary Wright, who had inherited a
fortune from her father. She was educated privately by a governess, initially in Cheshire and later in
Hampstead
. Her parents denied her wish to go to
university and she decided to embark on
social work.
After attending a
course on the economic basis of social
relations at the London School of Economics
she became involved in women's suffrage and joined the Women's Social and Political
Union.
In 1911 she began subscribing to
The
Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, a radical periodical
edited by
Dora Marsden and
Mary Gawthorpe. The following year its
proprietors withdrew their support from it and Weaver stepped in to
save it from financial ruin. In 1913 it was renamed
The New Freewoman. Later that year at the
suggestion of the magazine's literary editor,
Ezra Pound, the name was changed again to
The Egoist. During
the following years Weaver made more financial donations to the
periodical, becoming more involved with its organisation and also
becoming its editor.
Ezra Pound was involved with finding new contributors and one of
these was James Joyce. Weaver was convinced of his genius and
started to support him, first by serialising
A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man in
The Egoist in 1914. When Joyce
could not find anyone to publish it as a book, Weaver set up the
Egoist Press for this purpose at her own expense. Joyce's
Ulysses was then serialised
in The Egoist but because of its controversial content it was
rejected by all the printers approached by Weaver and she arranged
for it to be printed abroad. Weaver continued to give considerable
support to Joyce and his family but following her reservations
about his work that was to become
Finnegans Wake, their relationship
became strained and then virtually broken. However, on Joyce's
death, Weaver paid for his funeral and acted as his
executor.
In 1931 Weaver joined the
Labour
Party but then, having been influenced by reading
Marx's Das
Kapital she joined the
Communist Party in 1938. She was active in
this organisation, taking part in demonstrations and selling copies
of the
Daily Worker. She
also continued her allegiance to the memory of Joyce, acting as his
literary executor and helping to compile
The Letters of James
Joyce.
She died at her home near Saffron Walden
in 1961, leaving her collection of literary
material to the British
Library
and to the National Book League.
See also
References
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