Edward Reynolds Pease was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer and a founding member of the Fabian Society

Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...

.

Pease, the sixth of fifteen children, was born near Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, the son of devout Quakers, Thomas Pease (1816-1884) and Susanna Ann Fry (1829-1917) sister of Edward Fry

Edward Fry

Sir Edward Fry GCB, GCMG, PC, FRS , was a judge in the British Court of Appeal and also an arbitrator on the International Permanent Court of Arbitration. He was a Quaker, son of Joseph Fry and Mary Ann Swaine....

, the judge. He was educated at home until he was sixteen, and soon after moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 where he soon became a successful stock-broker.
In the early 1880s Pease became friends with Frank Podmore

Frank Podmore

Frank Podmore was an English author, founding member of the Fabian Society, and writer on psychic matters.-Life:...

 and husband and wife Edith Nesbit

E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet whose children's works were published under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television...

 and Hubert Bland

Hubert Bland

Hubert Bland was an early English socialist and one of the founders of the Fabian Society.Born in Woolwich, south-east London, Bland wanted to join the army but instead became a bank clerk. In 1877, he met 19-year-old Edith Nesbit, a follower of William Morris. They married on 22 April 1880 with...

. In 1884, the group founded the Fabian Society.

In 1886, the death of a wealthy relative meant Pease received a sizeable legacy allowing him to give up work at the London Stock Exchange and devote time to his socialist interests. In 1886, he moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, began working as a cabinet-maker and formed a branch of the National Labour Federation. However, his attempts to convert the working class to socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 were unsuccessful so he returned to London. He travelled to America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with Sidney Webb in 1888, and on his return married Marjory Davidson, a young Scottish schoolteacher.

In 1890 Pease was appointed secretary of the Fabian Society. As well as managing the society's administration, he edited Fabian News and wrote ten pamphlets, including tracts on liquor licensing (1899) and The History of the Fabian Society (1916).

With Sidney and Beatrice Webb

Beatrice Webb

Martha Beatrice Webb, Lady Passfield was an English sociologist, economist, socialist and social reformer. Although her husband became Baron Passfield in 1929, she refused to be known as Lady Passfield...

, Pease was a trustee in the fund used to found the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 (LSE) in 1895.

Pease was also a member of the Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party

The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

 and in February 1900 he represented the Fabian Society at the meeting where it was decided to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament", forming the Labour Representation Committee (LRC - the forerunner to the Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

) to which Pease was elected, serving on the Party's executive committee for 14 years.

Pease married Mary (Marjory) Gammell Davidson (1861-1950). They had two children: Michael S. Pease, the geneticist, and Nicholas Arthington Pease.

With his wife Marjory, Pease established the East Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

 Labour Party and both served on the local council. Their home at Limpsfield

Limpsfield

Limpsfield is a village and parish in the east of the county of Surrey, England near Oxted at the foot of the North Downs. It lies between the A25 to the south and the M25 motorway to the north, near the Clackett Lane service station...

, The Pendicle, Pastens Road, became known as 'Dostoevsky Corner', because he housed so many Russian refugees who had been forced to leave their country because of their socialist beliefs.

External links

• biographical record at British Library of Political & Economic Science
  • The History of the Fabian Society by Edward R. Pease

Further reading

• ODNB article by Mark Bevir, ‘Pease, Edward Reynolds (1857–1955)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35445, accessed 5 Jan 2009.