Background
Charlotte Franken was born in Sydenham, London. Her parents were Jewish immigrants, her father, Joseph, a German fur trader.
Charlotte Franken was born in Sydenham, London. Her parents were Jewish immigrants, her father, Joseph, a German fur trader.
Her second husband was the biologist J.B.S. In 1906 the family moved to Antwerp. She enrolled on a typing course in London.
Charlotte later described herself as a "feminist and suffragette" from the age of sixteen. Charlotte joined the Daily Express as a journalist in 1920.
She also became an advocate of divorce reform, married women"s employment, and easier access to contraception.
In 1924 she interviewed the biologist J.B.S. for the Daily Express, and they soon became friends. In the same year, wrote a dystopian novel, Manitoba"s World, set in a world ruled by a male scientific elite who restrict the number of women born. From adolescence women in this world are either made into "vocational mothers" or, if they have no interest in motherhood, they are sterilized by the government and become "neuters".
Manitoba"s World is sometimes compared to other dystopian novels of the interwar period, including Aldous Huxley"s Brave New World and Katharine Burdekin"s Swastika Night.
In 1937 Charlotte joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. During this time she also worked as editor of the anti-fascist magazine Woman Today.
J.B.S. later married Helen Spurway. She spent her last years writing biographies of several historical figures.
She died in 1969 of pneumonia.
(Clean boards with titles at spine faded. Light age tone t...)
(London published Biography)
(china history)
Haldane"s 1927 book Motherhood and Its Enemies drew some criticism for its attacks on spinsters and suffragettes for "devaluing motherhood" and causing male-female "sex antagonism." Despite Haldane"s feminism, Sheila Jeffreys has called Motherhood and its Enemies "an antifeminist classic". After a wartime trip to the Soviet Union, she became disillusioned with communism, which J.B.S. still believed in, writing about it in Russian Newsreel.