Workhouse Characters & Other Sketches of the Life of the Poor

Margaret Wynne Jones was born on the 11th January 1858 in Leicester, England.

Her father taught her Latin and Greek and she later earned a Lady Literate in Arts degree from the University of St Andrews. Because of the restrictions on women at the time, a normal degree was very difficult to obtain and this LLA was a distance learning qualification which, until the 1920’s, became available across the globe and gave at least some recognition of women’s abilities.

She married the journalist and author Henry Wood Nevinson and dedicated her literary and personal life to exposing social injustices. As an author, she published poignant collections of stories and sketches detailing the lives of the poor, including ‘Workhouse Characters’ (1918) and ‘Fragments of Life’ (1922).

In 1911 her one-act play, ‘In the Workhouse’, dynamically exposed how married women were legally stripped of their rights under Poor Law systems. She also detailed her activism in her 1926 autobiography, ‘Life's Fitful Fever’.

Beyond her writing, she was one of the first female Justices of the Peace and a crucial founder of the Women's Freedom League.

Margaret Wynne Nevinson died on the 8th June 1932 in London, England. She was 74.

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E-bog: 15. august 2026