Edith Bone

Edith Bone (28 January 1889 – 14 February 1975), originally Edit Olga Hajós, was a medical professional, journalist and translator who later became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Early life Bone was born in Hungary in 1889. She was fluent in six languages.

In July 1936, she and her friend and fellow communist, artist Felicia Browne, traveled to Spain to attend the international People's Olympiad, a protest event against the 1936 Olympics. However the event was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

Bone remained in Spain, working as a doctor

During her detention, Bone managed to avoid the mental instability or insanity that typically accompanies isolation. She developed a series of mental exercises, including reviews of geometry, the several languages she knew and vocabulary. She mentally reconstructed the plots of all of the books she had read, made a comprehensive list of all of the characters in Shakespeare and Dickens' works she could remember, and made letters out of the dense black bread she was fed; out of these she composed poetry. due to the betrayal of being imprisoned by her fellow communists, and the communist Daily Worker newspaper which had sent her there.

Publications