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Louisa Sarah Bevington (born St John's Hill, Battersea, Surrey, now London Borough of Wandsworth, 14 May 1845; died Lechmere Road, Willesden Green, Middlesex, now London Borough of Brent, 28 November 1895) was an English anarchist, essayist and poet. ==Early life and works== Bevington was the oldest of eight children (seven daughters) born into the Quaker family of Alexander Bevington and his wife Louisa. Her father's occupation was described as "gentleman", and in 1861–71 he was a member of Lloyd's.〔'Bevington, Colin Corry', at http://www.bishopburton.org.uk/s1/attachments/article/410/CC%20Bevington.pdf.〕 Details of her education are unknown, but in the 1861 England census she is listed among the thirty scholars at a school run by a Miss Eliza Hovell at Marlborough House, Winchcombe Street, Cheltenham, while her parents and siblings are listed as residing at Walthamstow (with four house servants and a coachman). She began to write poetry at an early age, and probably made her verse debut with two sonnets in the ''Friends' Quarterly Examiner'' in October 1871.〔 Orlando project biography. (Retrieved 28 April 2015. )〕 Bevington's first collection, ''Key Notes'', a mere 23 pages, was published in London in 1876, under the pseudonym Arbor Leigh.〔 British Library Catalogue. (Retrieved 28 April 2015. )〕 A second publication, ''Key-Notes: 1879'',〔 British Library Catalogue. (Retrieved 28 April 2015. )〕 appeared under the name L. S. Bevington and seemed to query some established Christian codes of conduct. A further volume of verse, ''Poems, Lyrics and Sonnets'' (1882) contained metrical experiments and remarks on the moribund state of Christianity.〔 ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English'', eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 91.〕 One prominent London weekly〔''The Spectator'', 18 October 1879.〕 wrote admiringly of a poem in Bevington's 1879 ''Key-Notes'', describing it as "an exposition of the theory, physical and moral, of Evolution, which she entitles, 'Unto This Present'. If it were nothing else, it would be quite remarkable, as a literary tour de force, for the extraordinary ingenuity and success with which the writer has reduced to verse that never ceases to have a certain smoothness and even harmony, an argument bristling, so to speak, with philosophical terms. But it is more than this. It is a very eloquent and lucid philosophical statement, which, we take it, a scientific teacher would allow to give a clear and well-defined outline of the theory." Another reviewer, however, found that Bevington's style was one for which, "in the present condition of the English language, there is no vocabulary, but which exactly corresponds to the peculiar qualities known as 'goodiness,' 'cant,' and 'unctuosity,' when the writer or speaker happens to be content with the faith of his or her fathers. To us the style is equally offensive, whatever may be the opinions of the stylist, and we have rarely come across a more offensive example of it than these ''Key Notes'' … () In the midst of this come a series of poems on the months, and a few miscellaneous songs which possess great simplicity, melody, and truth."〔''The Examiner'', 12 April 1879.〕 More widely read and appreciated were her prose arguments on similar subjects. In an article in ''The Nineteenth Century'' in October 1879, entitled "Atheism and Morality", Bevington took a clear secularist position that provoked a clerical response. In December the same year, Bevington concluded a two-part essay entitled "Modern Atheism and Mr. Mallock", reacting to an attack on atheism in the same paper by a young Oxford graduate by putting forward a spirited defence of secular morality: "So far as human life is worth living, so far is it worth protecting. So far as it is not worth living, so far is it needful to ameliorate it. Duty, on secular principles, consists in the summarized conduct conducive to the ''permanent protection'' and ''progressive amelioration of'' the human lot.... Religion's foster-child, Society, must eventually learn to trust her own two feet of civil and moral law, and run alone."〔''The Nineteenth Century'', December 1879, pp. 1001 and 1015. Quoted in Barbara Gates: ''Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories'' (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 153. (Retrieved 29 April 2015. )〕 A further contribution to this debate was prompted by a letter to Bevington from the philosopher Herbert Spencer, pointing out that rationalists showed greater humanity than adherents of organized religion.〔Letter of 18 May 1881, quoted in David Duncan: ''The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014 ()), p. 216. (Retrieved 29 April 2015. )〕 Her exposition of this appeared in ''The Fortnightly Review'' in August 1881 under the title "The Moral Colour of Rationalism". The discussion continued as an altercation between Spencer and the historian Goldwyn Smith in ''The Contemporary Review''. In 1883 Bevington travelled to Germany, where on 2 May that year she married the artist Ignatz Guggenberger in Munich.〔'Marriages', ''Sussex Agricultural Express'', 8 May 1883.〕 In 1888, however, writing under her maiden name, she complained that "The minor and superficial domesticities of the hour are (German woman's ) only field of aspiration; ''klatsch'' () with her feminine acquaintances, or hanging out of window, are the most usual delights of her leisure hours; and even within the province assigned to her she habitually shrinks from the smallest mental departure on her own account … () majority of German women are decidedly poor company, and the German home is humdrum and barren of all attraction for the other sex."〔L. S. Bevington, 'Women in Germany', ''Woman's World'', August 1888, as quoted in the ''Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser'', 11 August 1888.〕 Her marriage lasted only until 1890, when she returned to London. There she began to move in anarchist circles and continued to use her maiden name.〔 "Bevington, Louisa Sarah, 1845–1895" (Retrieved 28 April 2015. )〕 (In 1891 she commented to an unknown correspondent that she preferred "L. S. Bevington" to "Miss Bevington", as she routinely objected to "Mrs" and "Miss", and suggested that her married name, Guggenberger, would have value only as an afterthought in a German publication. The letter was signed "L. S. Guggenberger".)〔(Summary of a letter of 25 December 1891 to 'Dear Sir' in the Allison-Shelley manuscript collection of Pennsylvania State University Libraries. ) 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「L. S. Bevington」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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