Playne, Caroline Elizabeth (1857-1948) pacifist and historianMore Info on CreatorLess Info on Creator
Playne, Caroline Elizabeth (1857-1948), pacifist and historian, was born at Forest Green, Avening, Gloucestershire, on 2 May 1857, one of two daughters of George Frederick Playne (1824–1879), Gloucestershire cloth manufacturer and fellow of the Geographical Society, and his Dutch wife, Margarettia Sara, the daughter of I. G. J. van den Bosch. Her mother tongue was Dutch. Although there is no record of her having studied at a British university, she was elected an associate member of the University Women's Club in 1908. By that time she had published two novels, 'The Romance of a Lonely Woman' (1904) and 'The Terror of the Macdurghotts' (1907), and had published a paper, ‘The evolution of international peace’, countering the aggressive social Darwinism of her day with the internationalism of Grotius, Kant, Kropotkin, L. T. Hobhouse, and Tolstoy, which she had read to the Anglo-Russian Literary Society.
Around 1904 Playne became a founder member of Britain's National Peace Council supporting the recently founded international court at The Hague and in 1908 attended the International Peace Congress in London attended by Bertha von Suttner, whose biographer she later became. Dismayed by the outbreak of the First World War, she immediately joined the Emergency Committee for the Relief of Distressed Enemy Aliens (Germans trapped in Britain), joined E. D. Morel's Union for the Democratic Control of Foreign Policy and worked for the Nailsworth Peace Association and the National Peace Council that was then arranging a postal service for personal correspondence between the belligerent countries and was also trying to trace missing persons. Playne also translated and published articles from the Berliner Tageblatt that praised Quaker relief efforts for German internees and prisoners of war, collected suppressed pacifist pamphlets; and she also kept private notes of the constant war propaganda in the British press and a private diary of the war years.
In the aftermath of the First World War, Playne dedicated herself to publishing volumes on the futility of the war and how nations had fallen into such a situation, with the hope that her work would enlighten as to prevent war happening again and stop the people being fooled by propaganda . Her 'Neuroses of the Nations' (1925) focused on Germany and France and she followed this with 'The Pre-War Mind in Britain' (1928), 'Society and War, 1914–16' (1931), and 'Britain Holds on, 1917, 1918' (1933). Finally, in 1936, she published 'Bertha von Suttner and the Struggle to Avert the World War'.
She died in Hampstead, London on 27 January 1948.
Scope and ContentNotes, press cuttings, pamphlets and journals compiled and collected by Caroline Elizabeth Playne for her research and publications, including material regarding the war effort in the First World War in Britain, France, Germany and other countries, pacifism, censorship and propaganda and the internment of aliens in Britain, along with publications of pacifist groups, such as the National Peace Council, the No-Conscription Fellowship and the Union of Democratic Control, socialist pamphlets and official publications, 1907-1924.
Conditions governing accessOpen for research. Access to individual files may be restricted under the Freedom of Information Act. Please contact the University Archivist for details. At least 24 hours notice is required for research visits.
Extent22 boxes
Finding aidsBound handlist available in Senate House Library Special Collections searchroom. A pdf copy is attached to this description. Researchers should order material using "MS1112" as a prefix to the folder number.