Leonora de Alberti (1870 – 1934) was an English-born historian and suffragist. As well as writing on Spanish history and producing a Spanish-English and a Portuguese-English dictionary, she edited the journal of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society (later St Joan's International Alliance).

Early life and family

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She was born in Marylebone, the seventh of ten children of Eugenio de Alberti and his wife, French-born Amalia de Acuñaga, who had moved to London in 1866. Her sister Amalia de Alberti was a journalist and translator whose main achievement was a three-volume translation of Romain Rolland’s L’Ame enchantée.[1]

History and language publications

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In 1909, she collaborated with economic historian Annie Wallis Chapman on a paper for the Royal Historical Society on English traders and the Spanish Inquisition,[2] which became the book English Merchants and the Spanish Inquisition in the Canaries in 1919. By this time she had worked as an editor for the Camden Society.[3]

She produced Spanish-English and Portuguese-English pocket dictionaries for Hill in 1919 and 1920.[1]

In 1925 she assisted with translation for Lucien Wolf's Jews in the Canary Islands.[4]

Suffragism

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In 1913, partly in reaction to what she perceived as the too moderate views of other Catholic suffragists like Margaret Fletcher, she published a pamphlet, Woman Suffrage and Pious Opponents, arguing that Catholic women did not need to oppose women’s suffrage on pious grounds.[5][6]

From 1915, while working part-time at the Public Record Office, she belonged to the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society and was the inaugural editor of its journal The Catholic Suffragist.[7][8] Women’s suffrage was the main focus of the journal, but Leonora also wrote articles against laws which discriminated against women and reactions to sexist publications.[9]

In the 1920s she served as honorary secretary for the Council for the Representation of Women in the League of Nations.[10]

References

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  1. ^ a b Hooper, Kirsty (2020-05-14). The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession. Liverpool University Press. p. 311. ISBN 978-1-78962-726-8.
  2. ^ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Society. 1909. p. 237.
  3. ^ Islands, Inquisition Canary; Alberti, Leonora de (1912). English Merchants and the Spanish Inquisition in the Canaries: Extracts from the Archives in Possession of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Bute. Offices of the Society. ISBN 978-0-86193-023-4.
  4. ^ Church, Catholic; America, Renaissance Society of (2001-01-01). Jews in the Canary Islands: Being a Calendar of Jewish Cases Extracted from the Records of the Canariote Inquisition in the Collection of the Marquess of Bute. University of Toronto Press. pp. vi. ISBN 978-0-8020-8450-7.
  5. ^ Alberti, Leonora de (1910). Woman Suffrage and Pious Opponents. Fhe Catholic Women's Suffrage Society.
  6. ^ Lamontagne, Kathryn G. (2023-07-26). Reconsidering Catholic Lay Womanhood: Pious Transgressors in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England. Taylor & Francis. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-000-90602-8.
  7. ^ Melman, Billie (2013-01-11). Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace 1870-1930. Routledge. p. 277. ISBN 978-1-136-04390-1.
  8. ^ de Alberti, Leonora (15 Oct 1928). "A History of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society". Catholic Citizen. p. 77.
  9. ^ Mason, Francis M. (1986). "The Newer Eve: The Catholic Women's Suffrage Society in England, 1911-1923". The Catholic Historical Review. 72 (4): 620–638. ISSN 0008-8080. JSTOR 25022408.
  10. ^ Gorman, Daniel (2012-08-20). The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02113-6.