# Female philanthropy in the interwar world

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/female-philanthropy-in-the-interwar-world/
- Published: 2018-03-13T12:25:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Female philanthropy was at the heart of transformative thinking about society 
and the role of individuals in the interwar period. **

In Britain, in the aftermath of the First World War, professionalisation; the authority
of the social sciences; mass democracy; internationalism; and new media sounded 
the future and, for many, the death knell of elite practices of benevolence.

Eve Colpus tells a new story about a world in which female philanthropists reshaped
personal models of charity for modern projects of social connectedness, and new 
forms of cultural and political encounter.

Centring the stories of four remarkable British-born women –

 * Evangeline Booth
 * Lettice Fisher
 * Emily Kinnaird
 * and Muriel Paget

– Colpus recaptures the breadth of the social, cultural and political influence 
of women’s philanthropy upon practices of social activism.

_Female Philanthropy in the Interwar World_ is not only a new history of women’s
civic agency in the interwar period, but also a study of how female philanthropists
explored approaches to identification and cultural difference that emphasised friendship
in relation to interwar modernity.

Richly detailed, the book’s perspective on women’s social interventionism offers
a new reading of the centrality of personal relationships to philanthropy that can
inform alternative models of giving today.