Cicely Hamilton was born Cicely Hammill in 1872. One of four children of an army commander she was farmed out as an infant while her parents were abroad and, following education at private schools in England and Germany, briefly became a pupil teacher. Hamilton, whose father died when she was eighteen, was a passionate exponent of female self-sufficiency and an active member of the female suffrage movement. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union and the Actresses' Franchise League, and was a founder member of the Women Writers' Suffrage League.
From her early articles for Time and Tide, through her prose account Marriage as a Trade (1909) to her post-First World War articles on such issues as birth control and abortion, Hamilton's recurrent theme was female self-determination
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Citation: Chothia, Jean. "Cicely Hamilton". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 November 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1956, accessed 23 November 2024.]
