*** Welcome to piglix ***

Olivia Rossetti Agresti


Olivia Rossetti Agresti (30 September 1875 – 6 November 1960) was a British activist, author, editor, and interpreter. A member of one of England's most prominent artistic and literary families, her unconventional political trajectory began with anarchism, continued with the League of Nations, and ended with Italian fascism. Her involvement with the latter led to an important correspondence and friendship with Ezra Pound, who mentions her twice in his Cantos.

Olivia Rossetti Agresti was born in London to William Michael Rossetti, one of the seven founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the editor of its literary magazine The Germ. A granddaughter of Gabriele Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, she was hence a niece of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, as well as a first cousin of Ford Madox Ford.

While still in their girlhood, Olivia and her sister, the future Helen Rossetti Angeli (1879-1969), began publishing an anarchist journal, The Torch, in the basement of their family home. Despite their youth, this effort became the nucleus of a prominent anarchist salon which included Peter Kropotkin and Sergei Kravchinski, and their publishing coups included the pamphlet Why I Am an Anarchist by George Bernard Shaw. Years later, using the pseudonym "Isabel Meredith", Olivia and Helen published A Girl Among the Anarchists, a somewhat fictionalized memoir of their days as precocious child revolutionaries. These adventures were also chronicled by their cousin Ford Madox Ford in his 1931 memoir Return to Yesterday.


...
Wikipedia

...