Making Socialists: Mary Bridges Adams and the Fight for Knowledge and Power, 1855–1939

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.

More than a local politician, Mary Bridges Adams was among the dynamic late nineteenth-century women activists who sought to transform government policy through socialist initiatives, with the ultimate (utopian) aim of creating a social nation.

The author has assembled a thorough range of sources, including new materials that will bring fresh insights to this biography and more generally to Labour Party and socialist historiography, well-studied topics.

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. Placed against the circumstances in which she lived and presented as part of a militant and anti-capitalist tradition within labour history, her life story contributes to new ways of seeing both socialist and feminist politics.