In 1874, Besant married Mary Garrett (née Foster Barham), daughter of Eustace Foster-Barham, of Bridgwater, with whom he had four children. For some time he took care of his sister-in-law Annie Besant, a prominent women's rights activist, socialist, and theosophist.
Career
In 1868 he published Studies in French Poetry. Three years later he began his collaboration with writer James Rice. Among their joint productions are Ready-money Mortiboy (1872), and The Golden Butterfly (1876), both, especially the latter, very successful. This association was ended by the death of Rice in 1882.
Thereafter, Besant continued to write voluminously by himself, his main novels being All in a Garden Fair set in Hainault Forest in Essex. Rudyard Kipling credited the book in Something of Myself with inspiring him to leave India and make a career as a writer, and which George Gissing read with 'extreme delight', calling it 'one of the most charming and delicate of modern novels,
Then followed Dorothy Forster (his own favorite), Children of Gibeon, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men. The two last belonged to a series in which he endeavoured to arouse the public conscience to the hardship among the poorest classes of cities. In this crusade Besant had considerable success, the establishment of The People's Palace in the East of London being one result. His 1889 novel The Bell of St. Paul's was considered by his contemporary author George Gissing to be an 'absurd and empty book'.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine published ten of his works of fiction, including "All Sorts and Conditions of Men; an Impossible Story," which is famous for having suggested the founding of the People's Palace, London.
In addition to his fiction, Besant wrote largely on the history and topography of London. His plans for this topic were left unfinished: among his books on this subject is London in the 18th Century. From 1879 Besant was the joint editor of The New Plutarch book series published by Marcus Ward & Co. and G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Besant was a freemason, joining the Lodge of Harmony in Mauritius in 1862. He became Master of Marquis of Dalhousie Lodge, London in 1873, having joined in 1869. He was one of the founders of the first Masonic research lodge, Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2076, of which he was the first treasurer from 1886. He was also one of the founders and first chair of the Society of Authors in 1884. He was knighted in the 1895 Birthday Honours as a Knight Bachelor.
Besant was treasurer of the "Atlantic Union", an association which sought to improve social relations between Britons and Americans. In 1896, he published an article in the North American Review advocating the creation of a "United Federation of States" to unify the Anglosphere under a federal system; he cited the "restlessness" of the Anglo-Saxon people and the existing achievements of the United States and the British Empire in claiming that the Federation "would be the greatest, the richest, the most powerful empire, republic or state that history has ever recorded."
Death
He died in Frognal in Hampstead, London on 9 June 1901, aged 64.
In 1903, the Society of Authors erected at St. Paul's a plaque to Besant by George Frampton. The inscription reads: "Sir Walter Besant, novelist, historian of London, secretary of the Palestine exploration fund, originator of the people's palace and founder of the Society of Authors. This monument is erected by his grateful brethren in literature. Born August 14, 1836. Died June, 1901."
My Little Girl. By the authors of Ready-money Mortiboy. With James Rice. 3 vols. 1873.
No Other Way. 1902.
The Orange Girl. 1899.
Ready-Money Mortiboy. Repr. from Once a Week. With James Rice. 3 vols. London: Tinsley, Brothers, 1872. Repr. of 1885 ed. Bath, 1974. 1890 editionat the Internet Archive
The Rebel Queen. 3 vols. 1893.
The Revolt of Man. 1882. [Speculative fiction: traditional roles of sexes are reversed].
Novels by W.B. and James Rice. Library ed. 10 vols. 1887–88. Comprising in sequence Ready-Money Mortiboy, This Son of Vulcan, With Harp and Crown, The Golden Butterfly, By Celia's Arbour, The Seamy Side, The Chaplain of the Fleet, The Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other Tales, 'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay and Other Stories, The Ten Years' Tenant and Other Stories [My Little Girl, The Monks of Thelema apparently missing from this series].
Plays
The Charm and other drawing-room plays. With W. Pollock. 1896
General non-fiction
[excluding items on London]
Books
Studies in Early French Poetry. London: Macmillan & Co., 1868.
Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin. Richard Bentley & Son, 1871. Joint author: E. H. Palmer.
The French Humourists from the 12th to the 19th Century. Beutley, 1873.
Constantinople. A Sketch of its History from its Foundation to its Conquest by the Turks in 1453. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1879. Joint author: William Jackson Brodribb.
Rabelais. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1879 (Foreign Classics for English Readers).
Sir Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. London and Belfast: Marcus Ward & Co., and New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1881 (The New Plutarch). New ed. 1894. Joint author: James Rice.
Gaspard II de Coligny (Marquis de Chatillon). London and Belfast: Marcus Ward & Co., 1879 (The New Plutarch). New ed. 1894.
The Life and Achievements of Edward Henry Palmer. London: John Murray, 1883.
The Art of Fiction: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday Evening, April 25, 1884. London: Chatto & Windus, 1884. New ed., 1902.
William Tuckwell, Art and Hand Work for the People, being Three Papers Read before the Social Science Congress, Sept. 1884. By W.T., C. G. Leland, and W. Besant. Manchester, 1885.
↑Letters of George Gissing to members of his family, collected and arranged by Algernon and Ellen Gissing. London: Constable, 1927, letter dated 6/3/1884
↑Diniejko, D. Litt., Andrzej (30 December 2012). "Walter Besant: A Biographical Sketch". Victorian Web. Providence, Rhode Island: Victorian Web Foundation. Retrieved 29 December 2024.
Simon Eliot, "'His Generation Read His Stories': Walter Besant, Chatto and Windus and All Sorts and Conditions of Men," Publishing History 21 (1987): 25–67.
John Goode, "The Art of Fiction: Walter Besant and Henry James," in David Howard, John Lucas, and John Goode, eds., Tradition and Tolerance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Critical Essays on Some English and American Novels (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
Charles G. Harper, "Walter Besant's London", Chapter VII of his A Literary Man's London (London: Cecil Palmer, 1926), pp.196–221.
Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971).
P. J. Keating, The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971).
Peter Keating, The Haunted Study: A Social History of the English Novel 1875–1914 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1989).
Andrew Mearns, "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" (1883 penny pamphlet).
G. P. Moss and M. V. Saville, From Palace to College: An Illustrated Account of Queen Mary College, University of London (London: Queen Mary College, 1985).
Wim Neetens, "Problems of a 'Democratic Text': Walter Besant's Impossible Story," Novel 23 (1990): 247-64.
Alan Palmer, The East End: Four Centuries of London Life (London: John Murray, 1989).
Review, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, Westminster Review NS 63 (January 1883): 288.
Review, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, Spectator, 21 October 1882: 1349.
Helen Small, "Introduction," Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (Oxford: OUP, 1997), x-xxv.
Mark Spilka, "Henry James and Walter Besant: 'The Art of Fiction' Controversy," Novel 6 (1973): 101-9.
Eileen Yeo, "Culture and Constraint in Working-Class Movements," in Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo, eds., Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure (Brighton, 1987), 155-86.
Cousin, John William (1910), "Besant, Sir Walter", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource
Media related to Walter Besant at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Walter Besant at Wikiquote
