thumb|Graham Wallas portrait taken c. 1920s

Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics.

Biography

Born in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, Wallas was the older brother of Katharine, later to become a politician. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was at Oxford that Wallas abandoned his religion. He taught at Highgate School until 1885, when he resigned rather than participate in communion. He was President of the Rationalist Press Association

Wallas joined the Fabian Society in April 1886, following his acquaintances Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw. He was to resign in 1904 in protest at Fabian support for Joseph Chamberlain's tariff policy. In 1894 he was elected to the London School Board as a Progressive. May was to publish editions of many of her father's works, including the 1940 collection Men and Ideas: Essays by Graham Wallas.

Wallas became chair of the board's school management committee in 1897, and until he was defeated in 1907, the encouragement of educational reform and the raising of academic standards in state schools were some his main activities. which remains highly cited in scholarly works on creativity.

Works

References

thumb|Agricultural Economics Literature; vol. 12, no. 8, October 1938; quotation from Wallas

Further reading

  • Martin Wiener (1971). Between Two Worlds: the political thought of Graham Wallas, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • Asitananda Roy, The Psychological Politics of Graham Walls
  • Works by Graham Wallas, at HathiTrust
  • Catalogue of the Wallas papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.
  • Spartacus bio