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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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BROUGHAM VILLIERS (1863 - 1939) This was the pseudonym of Frederick John Shaw, who was born into a comfortable family at 1, Hawthorn Terrace, Newcastle. Until 1908, he was engaged in business except for an interval as joint editor of the Newcastle Evening News and Morning Mail and travelled about the North East, living lived in South Shields, Gateshead and then Heaton. He wrote a volume of poems Past and Future (1898). Shaw had joined the Fabian Society in 1890, and the ILP in 1894, and played an active part in promoting the socialist and labour movement in the North East. He wrote a number of studies of the Liberal, socialist and suffrage movements in Britain, almost always using his pseudonym. Before WWI his main works were The Opportunity of Liberalism (1904), The Socialist Movement in England (1908) and Modern Democracy (1912). He also edited The Case for Women's Suffrage (1907). After the war, Shaw's main works were Britain after the Peace (1918) and England and the New Era (1920) his last important work. He felt that the war's effects had inaugurated a revolutionary era, and the days of 1890s gradualism were over. In particular, he advocated a capital levy to restore the finances of the state, and a League of Nations overseeing demilitarisation, and free trade (a long-held principle) so as to ensure peace.
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