‘The Weekly Crowd. By Chimaera’: Collective Identities and Radical Culture

Abstract

This chapter examines one of Time and Tide’s long-running features – ‘The Weekly Crowd’ contributed pseudonymously by the poet and children’s writer Eleanor Farjeon – and explores the magazine’s relationship to the labour movement and networks associated with the socialist press. Inflected by Farjeon’s socialism and pacifism the topical commentary in ‘The Weekly Crowd’ frequently subverted Time and Tide’s editorial position on such issues as Ireland, British foreign policy and the General Strike, and offered a radically different perspective on debates about work and leisure in the periodical. At the same time, close analysis of this feature shows that Farjeon’s radical voice became an integral part of the paper, and that the subversive energies of her verses became a resource for strengthening the collective identities offered by Time and Tide across socialist as well as feminist audiences.