Leonora de Alberti explained

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

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

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.

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

Suffragism

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]

Notes and References

1. Book: Hooper, Kirsty . The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession . 2020-05-14 . Liverpool University Press . 978-1-78962-726-8 . 311 . en.
2. Book: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society . 1909 . Society . 237 . en.
3. Book: Islands . Inquisition Canary . English Merchants and the Spanish Inquisition in the Canaries: Extracts from the Archives in Possession of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Bute . Alberti . Leonora de . 1912 . Offices of the Society . 978-0-86193-023-4 . en.
4. Book: Church . Catholic . 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 . America . Renaissance Society of . 2001-01-01 . University of Toronto Press . 978-0-8020-8450-7 . vi . en.
5. Book: Alberti, Leonora de . Woman Suffrage and Pious Opponents . 1910 . Fhe Catholic Women's Suffrage Society . en.
6. Book: Lamontagne, Kathryn G. . Reconsidering Catholic Lay Womanhood: Pious Transgressors in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England . 2023-07-26 . Taylor & Francis . 978-1-000-90602-8 . 123 . en.
7. Book: Melman, Billie . Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace 1870-1930 . 2013-01-11 . Routledge . 978-1-136-04390-1 . 277 . en.
8. News: de Alberti . Leonora . 15 Oct 1928 . A History of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society . Catholic Citizen . 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 . 25022408 . 0008-8080.
10. Book: Gorman, Daniel . The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s . 2012-08-20 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-107-02113-6 . en.