Micky Watkins 
Henrietta Barnett, of Hampstead Garden Suburb 

The feminist social reformer Henrietta Barnett (1851-1936) is best known as the moving spirit behind the creation of London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb. Yet, as Micky Watkins shows in this lively biography, the Suburb was only the final achievement of a long and varied career of social engagement, much of it spent among the worst slums of London’s East End. Octavia Hill, John Ruskin, Walter Crane, Beatrice Webb, Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Spencer, as well as innumerable East Enders – often riotously immune to attempts at their ‘improvement’ – people this vivid account.A woman of immense energy, Henrietta’s role in both Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Art Gallery was central to their foundation and continued success, and she spent the latter half of her life in realising her dream project of building Hampstead Garden Suburb.Henrietta’s work in town planning won the admiration of the American feminist Jane Addams, and in the USA she was feted by Henry Ford, Dale Carnegie and John Rockefeller. Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources, Micky Watkins traces Henrietta’s ground-breaking achievement in building in North London the utopian Hampstead Garden Suburb to house all classes and conditions of people, as an antidote to the East End slums. Her Suburb has influenced town planning all over the world.