Lady Victoria Welby was born in 1837 and died in 1912.
Almost at the same time that Ferdinand de Saussure proclaimed semiology (a science devoted to the study of the “life of signs in society”), Lady Victoria Welby created significs, “the study of the nature of signification in all its forms and relations” ( 1911: VII).
Her two most important books are:
- What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance. London: Macmillan & Co. (1903)
and - Significs and Language. The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretative Resources. London: Macmillan & Co. (1911)
Charles S. Peirce positively reviewed the first book after Welby asked his publisher to send him a copy. It was at this time that she began their correspondence, which lasted until her death.
The Exchange of Letters, collected in Semiotic and Signfics (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1977), a book edited by Charles S. Hardwick, contains important fruitful ideas about the nature and multiplicity of signs. Although Welby is better known today for her correspondence with Peirce than for her own work, they are valuable, though not yet fully appreciated.
