L. S. Bevington

Louisa Sarah Bevington (born St John's Hill, Battersea, Surrey, now London Borough of Wandsworth, 14 May 1845; died Lechmere Road, Willesden Green, Middlesex, now London Borough of Brent, 28 November 1895) was an English anarchist, essayist and poet.

Bevington was the oldest of eight children (seven daughters) born into the Quaker family of Alexander Bevington and his wife Louisa. Her father's occupation was described as "gentleman", and in 1861–71 he was a member of Lloyd's. Details of her education are unknown, but in the 1861 England census she is listed among the thirty scholars at a school run by a Miss Eliza Hovell at Marlborough House, Winchcombe Street, Cheltenham, while her parents and siblings are listed as residing at Walthamstow (with four house servants and a coachman). She began to write poetry at an early age, and probably made her verse debut with two sonnets in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner in October 1871.

Bevington's first collection, Key Notes, a mere 23 pages, was published in London in 1876, under the pseudonym Arbor Leigh. A second publication, Key-Notes: 1879, appeared under the name L. S. Bevington and seemed to query some established Christian codes of conduct. A further volume of verse, Poems, Lyrics and Sonnets (1882) contained metrical experiments and remarks on the moribund state of Christianity.

One prominent London weekly wrote admiringly of a poem in Bevington's 1879 Key-Notes, describing it as "an exposition of the theory, physical and moral, of Evolution, which she entitles, 'Unto This Present'. If it were nothing else, it would be quite remarkable, as a literary tour de force, for the extraordinary ingenuity and success with which the writer has reduced to verse that never ceases to have a certain smoothness and even harmony, an argument bristling, so to speak, with philosophical terms. But it is more than this. It is a very eloquent and lucid philosophical statement, which, we take it, a scientific teacher would allow to give a clear and well-defined outline of the theory." Another reviewer, however, found that Bevington's style was one for which, "in the present condition of the English language, there is no vocabulary, but which exactly corresponds to the peculiar qualities known as 'goodiness,' 'cant,' and 'unctuosity,' when the writer or speaker happens to be content with the faith of his or her fathers. To us the style is equally offensive, whatever may be the opinions of the stylist, and we have rarely come across a more offensive example of it than these Key Notes … [Although] In the midst of this come a series of poems on the months, and a few miscellaneous songs which possess great simplicity, melody, and truth."

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