Beatrice Harraden (24 January 1864 – 5 May 1936) was a British novelist, playwright and suffragette. She was a founding member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a member of the Women Writers Suffrage League. She published writing in the Votes for Women newspaper and novels. Her most successful work was Ships That Pass in the Night (1893).
Life
Harraden was born in Hampstead, London on 24 January 1864, to parents Samuel Harraden, a Cambridge-educated businessman who exported musical instruments to British India, and Rosalie Lindstedt Harraden, an Anglo-Indian woman. Harraden grew up to become an influential feminist writer and suffragette. She studied at Cheltenham Ladies' College in Gloucestershire, as well as at Queen's College and Bedford College in London. In 1883, she received her BA degree as well as an honours degree in Classics and Mathematics, which would have been a noteworthy feat for a woman in this era.
Harraden suffered lifelong illness which included a severe case of diphtheria and damage to her ulnar nerve as a result of playing the violoncello. In the early 1890s, she tried the rest cure at Menton on the French Riviera; took the Alpine Cure at a sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland; and experimented with hydrotherapy at a spa in Harrogate in the West Riding of Yorkshire, among other efforts to recover her health.
Her experience in the Alps resulted in her first novel Ships That Pass in the Night (1893), a best-seller which sold over one million copies. The love story set in a tuberculosis sanatorium, follows protagonist, Bernadine, an independent teacher, writer and activist, who falls in love with Robert, the Disagreeable man. After recovering and leaving the sanatorium, Bernadine returns to England. The popular novel ends rather tragically with Bernadine dying suddenly in a traffic accident. Though Harraden continued her career as a writer, she failed to achieve similar success with subsequent books which included novels, short stories and books for children.
