Dona Torr

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Dona Torr (1883- 1957) was a British Marxist historian, and a major influence on the Communist Party Historians Group. Aside from her translations of many Marxist classics into English, she is perhaps best known for her unfinished biography of Tom Mann, Tom Mann and his Times (1956).

She was a journalist, with a degree from University of London. She was a founder member in 1920 of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Torr and Garman worked at the party publishing house, Lawrence and Wishart, and they commissioned Christopher Hill's English Revolution intending it to be a central party text in celebrating the tercentenary of 1640-1940 with associated articles and pageantry. [...] The role of Dona Torr has been underestimated. Assessing the party purposes of Torr is essential to any analysis of her relationship to the historians from both the pre-war and the post-war periods. (Summary of 2004 doctoral dissertation)

She married Walter Holmes, who like her had been a journalist on the Daily Herald, and became a Communist and writer for the Daily Worker.

[edit] Influence

When E.P. Thompson brought out his 1955 biography of William Morris he described his gratitude to Dona Torr.

'She has repeatedly laid aside her own work in order to answer my enquiries or to read drafts of my material, until I felt that parts of the book were less my own than a collaboration in which her guiding ideas have the main part. It has been a privilege to be associated with a Communist scholar so versatile, so distinguished, and so generous with her gifts.'

In the following year a number of her students, including Christopher Hill and John Saville published a collection of essays in her honour, which describes her impact on them:

'She made us feel history on our pulses. History was not words on a page, not the goings-on of kings and prime ministers, not mere events. History was the sweat, blood, tears and triumphs of the common people, our people.'

[edit] Selected articles/works

  • Tom Mann (1936)
  • Marxism, nationality and war / a text-book (editor) (1940)
  • Marxism and war (1943)
  • History in the making (editor) (1948)
  • Tom Mann and his Times, vol. 1 (1956)
  • Democracy and the Labour Movement. Essays in honour of D. Torr (edited by John Saville) (1956)

[edit] External links