Eden Paul


Maurice Eden Paul was a British socialist physician, writer and translator.

Biography

Paul was the younger son of the publisher Charles Kegan Paul, and Margaret Colvile. His mother was one of 12 daughters born to Andrew Wedderburn-Colvile and the Hon. Mary Louisa Eden, fifth daughter of William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland. Maurice Eden Paul was baptised 1 November 1865 at Sturminster Marshall, Dorset.
He was educated at University College School and University College London; he continued his medical studies at London Hospital. In the mid-1880s he helped Beatrice Webb and Ella Pycroft run Katharine Buildings, model dwellings that were the first project of the philanthropically-motivated East End Dwellings Company, and in 1886 joined Charles Booth's Board of Statistical Inquiry investigating poverty in London.
In 1890, he married Margaret Jessie Macdonald, née Boag, a ward sister at the London Hospital. From 1892–4, he taught at a university in Japan, where his daughter Hester was born in 1893.
He travelled with the Japanese army as a Times correspondent during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Between 1895 and 1912, he practiced medicine in Japan, China, Perak, Singapore, Alderney and England. He was the founder and editor of the Nagasaki Press, 1897–99.
By 1903, the family had moved to Alderney, where his wife later established a private nursing home; however, the couple separated about this time. From 1907–19, he was a member of the ILP where he promoted eugenics, and worked for the French Socialist Party from 1912–14. He subsequently joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Later years

In 1932 he retired to live on the French Riviera. In 1939, aged 74, he was badly injured in a motor accident near Grasse. With his second wife, Cedar Paul, he wrote several books for a socialist reading public, and they also worked together to translate from German, French, Italian and Russian.

Works

Translations undertaken with [Cedar Paul]

;Other works