L.T.Hobhouse

1895 - 1910 - Fabianism and a time for social reform

1904
L.T. Hobhouse

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864-1929) was one of the leading social theorists of his generation and is noted for his prominence in the fields of liberalism and sociology. He was a temporary lecturer at LSE from 1896-97 before he became a journalist for the Manchester Guardian in 1897. He returned to the School as a lecturer in 1904, remaining until 1929. In 1907 he became the first Professor of Sociology in a British university. He was pivotal in the establishment and foundation of sociology as an academic discipline and in the refinement of its methodology.

In the history of political thought he figures as the last exponent of Liberal political philosophy in the grand manner and was an heir to the liberal tradition of John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Mill was one of the great historians of political thought and is famous for On Liberty (1859), a classic defence of the freedom of the individual. Hobhouse's Liberalism (1911) has been described as timelessly classic and the best twentieth century statement of Liberal ideals. He was a, if not the, leading Liberal theorist of the New Liberalism of the Edwardian period, and he was a major advocate of the social reforms of the Asquith government. He is acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of theoretical sociology in Britain and is counted among the most considerable British sociologists of the twentieth century. His published works include: Labour Movement (1893), Theory of Knowledge (1896), Morals in Evolution (1906), Development and Purpose (1913), and The Elements of Social Justice (1922).