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Janet Forbes Ashbee (28 December 1877 - 8 May 1961) was the wife of English architect and designer Charles Robert Ashbee (married 8 September 1898 until his death on 23 May 1942). She was Ashbee's muse and "comrade wife ," supporting his work as a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement.

Early life
Janet was born in 1877 in Godden Green, Kent, the daughter of Frank Forbes, a stockbroker, and Jessie Forbes, the Russian-speaking daughter of Scots parents. She enjoyed a fairly typical upper-middle-class Victorian upbringing: education at home by a governess, then a year's study at the Musik Hochschule in Berlin when she was 15, followed by a year in Paris. By 1895 she was back at home in Godden Green, waiting to be asked to be married.

Marriage to Charles Robert Ashbee ("CRA")
Janet's father, Frank Forbes, had been a benefactor of Ashbee's School and Guild of Handicraft since 1888. When Janet returned from Paris in 1895, Ashbee, then 32, visited Godden Green and began a courtship .Janet and Charles - always called CRA by anyone who knew him - had a rather laboured courtship and engagement, complicated by Ashbee's homosexuality and Janet's inexperience in matters of love and life. They were married on 8 September 1898 in St Peter and St Paul's Church, Seal, Kent. Janet was not quite 21 years old and Ashbee was 35 years old.

Work with the Guild and School of Handicraft
Janet supported her husband's work in East London until the guild moved to Chipping Campden in 1902, where it remained until it was dissolved in 1908. Janet was especially active in arranging music for the Guild's many performances and other entertainments.

Marital crisis and children
During the years in Chipping Campden, Janet gradually became aware that, due to her husband's homosexuality, she would never have children. From 1906 to 1908, Janet had an intimate but sexless affair with poet Gerald Bishop, which culminated in a nervous breakdown in 1908. She returned to Godden Green and submitted to the treatment of psychiatrist Henry Head. By 1909, Janet and her husband were able to achieve sexual intimacy, and she became pregnant in 1910, giving birth to a daughter Mary on 26 March 1911.

Three more daughters followed: While Janet felt a sense of purpose and fulfillment from her children, she continued to write and to support the Arts and Crafts Movement through her husband and also through the many contacts she had made in the movement.
 * Jane Felicity, born February 1913;
 * Helen Christabel, born 24 December 1915;
 * Prudence, born December 1917.

Later life
Janet joined her husband in Jerusalem from 1918 to 1921, during his work as an administrator, and continued raising four daughters. After Ashbee resigned from his post in 1921, Janet and her daughters returned to Godden Green to live with her elderly mother, who died in February 1924. Janet raised her daughters at Godden Green until her husband's death on 23 May 1942, after which the house was requisitioned for military use. She then lived in Wiltshire for three years, near her daughter Mary, and finally settled in Morecambe, Lancashire.

Death
Janet died on 8 May 1961, in Lancashire. She wrote her own obituary: "A woman of wide reading and culture, and a competent pianist (especially in accompanying) she had rather a boisterous sense of humour, and a racy manner of narrating, which made her company amusing and even exhilarating"

Lasting influence
Janet's life is remarkable for having transcended childlessness in a time when homosexuality was criminalized. She was always her husband's closest intellectual companion but feared she would never have children with him. Somehow she found a way to do that, a remarkable story told by her daughter Felicity in her 2002 book Janet Ashbee: Love, Marriage, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.