Making Socialists combines a biographical study of a (nowadays) virtually unknown woman with an original exploration of several major themes in late nineteenth and early twentieth century political and educational history.

Introduction – biography and history1. Being Mary2. Rebel communities3. Labour politics in London4. Rethinking socialism and education5. Education and class struggle6. The disinherited child and the politics of voice7. Bebel house and the political education of working women8. Revolutionary politics and World War One9. Reflections, connections and utopian visionsBibliographyAppendix 1 - The Daltry family treeAppendix 2 - The Adams family treeAppendix 3 – Mary Bridges Adams, time-lineAppendix 4 – Biographical notesIndex

Making socialists combines a biographical study of a (nowadays) virtually unknown woman with an original exploration of several major themes in late nineteenth, and early twentieth-century political and educational history. Beautiful, tireless, courageous and principled, Mary Bridges Adams gave up her life for the Cause. Encouraged by William Morris and with the patronage of Daisy Warwick, famous as the long-term love of Edward VII, she engaged in a range of political activities. By 1900, Mary was well known as a participant within the broader labour movement and as a campaigner for improvements in working-class education. During the First World War, she was in close touch with the European anti-war movement and threw herself into Russian émigré politics. Guiding campaigns in defence of the right of asylum, she had a range of contacts among suffragettes, trade unionists and socialists, as well as Russian political refugees. Mary urged working-class activists to fight the abandonment of industrial rights and guarantees, such as the right to strike and restrictions on the use of child labour, to back the unofficial rank and file industrial movement on Clydeside and the educational work of the Scottish Marxist John Maclean.Reconstructing the story of Mary’s life and the historical landscape in which that life was lived from previously unknown and under-utilised contemporary material, this study brings fresh insights to Labour Party and socialist historiography, both well-studied topics. Considering the main project of ‘making socialists’ from the standpoint of gender, it argues that an appreciation of Mary’s vision not only allows for an examination of areas of experience lost in grander narratives but also serves as a context for a fresh set of perspectives on the place of the educational question in the study of British socialism. The people Adams knew and the circles in which she travelled are particularly attractive features of this book. Foes thought her an awful woman: friends like George Bernard Shaw remembered the power of her oratory. Offering an original perspective for plotting women’s roles in British leftist oppositional networks, Mary’s life and the historical landscape in which that life was lived, contributes to new ways of seeing both socialist and feminist politics.