William Clarke (22 November 1852 – 8 May 1901) was a
British socialist activist, prominent in the
Fabian Society.
Born in
Norwich, Clarke worked as a clerk before attending the
University of Cambridge. He then worked as a journalist, first for local newspapers, then in London, and as a foreign correspondent for some American publications. This led him to specialise in writing about American politics and literature, and he went on several lecture tours of the United States.
[Willard Wolfe, "Clarke, William", in: ]
Clarke joined the Fabian Society in 1886, and served on its executive committee from 1888 until 1891, and as one of the society's first trustees. He lectured on "the industrial aspect of socialism", in particular as part of a tour of Lancashire, and this was published as part of the ''Fabian Essays'', the only article in the volume to take an explicitly
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
approach.
He wrote an early history of the society in 1894, published in the American edition of ''Fabian Essays''.
In 1892, the society with which Clarke had invested his savings collapsed, and he lost his money. His health also declined, and he gradually moved away from socialism, resigning from the Fabian Society in 1897.
He worked for the ''
Daily Chronicle'' for much of the decade, but resigned in 1899, on the grounds that he supported the Boers in the
Second Boer War. He launched ''The Progressive Review'' in 1897, but it did not succeed, and so he instead wrote for ''
The Spectator'' and ''
The Economist''.
Clarke suffered from poor health for many years, relating to
diabetes. In 1901 he went on a tour of
Herzegovina
Herzegovina ( or ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Hercegovina, separator=" / ", Херцеговина, ) is the southern and smaller of two main geographical region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being Bosnia. It has never had strictly defined geogra ...
, dying in
Mostar.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clarke, William
1852 births
1901 deaths
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
English journalists
Members of the Fabian Society
People from Norwich