Kapp , Yvonne , 1903-1999 , writer and activist Mynatt , Margaret , 1903-1977 , writer and activist

Kapp , Yvonne , 1903-1999 , writer and activist Mynatt , Margaret , 1903-1977 , writer and activist

Yvonne Kapp: Born Yvonne Mayer, 1903; educated at King's College London; married the artist, Edmond Kapp, 1922; joined Communist Party of Great Britain, 1936, following a visit to the Soviet Union; worked with Basque and Jewish refugees, 1937-1938; Assistant to Director, British Committee to Refugees from Czechoslovakia, dismissed from her post by the Home Office, 1940, and wrote [with Margaret Mynatt] pamphlet British Policy and the Refugees, 1941; Research Officer, Amalgamated Engineering Union, 1941-1946; worked for Medical Research Council, undertaking field work in the East End of London, 1947-1953; editor and translator, Lawrence and Wishart (publishers), 1953-1957; died 1999. Publications: four novels under the pseudonym Yvonne Cloud, including Nobody Asked You, 1932 and The Houses in Between, 1938; Eleanor Marx, (2 vols 1972, 1976).

Margaret Mynatt: Born Vienna, 1907, daughter of a British musician, John Charles Mynatt, (who was known professionally as Giovanni Carlo Minotti); she moved to Berlin in 1929, and joined the Communist Party, and was also involved with Bertolt Brecht and his circle, assistng in the creation of St Joan of the Stockyards and other plays; she left Germany in 1933, following the Reichstag fire, and settled in London; she was Head of Tribunals for the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, 1938-1941, and was dismissed (with Yvonne Kapp) by the Foreign Office in 1941; they subsequently published the pamphlet British Policy and the Refugees; she was Head of Reuters Soviet Monitor, 1951-1951; Manager of Central Books, 1951-1966 and a director of the publishers Lawrence and Wishart, 1966-1977; at the time of her death in Feb 1977 she was editor-in-chief of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels.