Mary Howitt

-
Standard Name: Howitt, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Botham
Married Name: Mary Howitt
Pseudonym: Wilfreda
Between them, Mary Howitt and her husband William wrote and published over 180 books. Hers alone, at her death, occupied forty pages of the British Museum printed catalogue.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
1, 261
Bearing the expenses of a large family, they needed to harness their literary productivity to earning potential.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
1, 134-5
As an opportunistic writer in several low-status, low-cost genres, accustomed to placing the same work in several successive venues, MH left a complex, even confusing bibliography, not yet reduced to order by scholars.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of the aged Mary Howitt. She is dressed in black: a dark hood covers her grey hair and white cap; her black, patterned cloak, tied with dark ribbons, covers a dark dress buttoned in front. Her eyes are cast down.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Grace Aguilar
Around this time her acquaintance deepened with Camilla Crosland .
Crosland, Camilla. Landmarks of a Literary Life, 1820-1892. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
174
Other Christian literary friends included Felicia Hemans , Mary Howitt , and Anna Maria Hall .
Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer. Wayne State University Press.
145
Intertextuality and Influence Grace Aguilar
The central character is the undowered girl Florence Leslie—so called because of her birth in Italy—whose high-minded principles have been fuelled by indiscriminate
Aguilar, Grace. Woman’s Friendship. D. Appleton and Company.
13
reading in history, poetry, and romance at an early age...
Occupation Hans Christian Andersen
At the age of eleven, HCA began working in factories; he later became an apprentice shoemaker. Although trained as an actor and singer, he is best known for his work as a playwright, novelist, and...
Friends, Associates Hans Christian Andersen
HCA dedicated his book A Poet's Day Dreams to Charles Dickens , whom he visited in 1857. He also, while visiting England, stayed with William and Mary Howitt at The Elms, Lower Clapton. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith , Christina Rossetti , Elizabeth Siddal , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Anna Mary Howitt , and Mary Howitt conducted a series of seances at the Hermitage, the Howitt family home.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
97
Education Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Mary Howitt , a friend of the Smith family, wrote approvingly of Benjamin Leigh Smith's unorthodox methods of childrearing: Objecting to schools he keeps his children at home, and their knowledge is gained by reading...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
BLSB 's other prominent women friends included Adelaide Procter , Anna Mary Howitt (Mary 's daughter), and Anna Brownell Jameson .
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
58, 71
politics Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
At the meeting the female members of the first Married Women's Property Committee confirmed the text of BLSB 's parliamentary petition and planned for a signature crusade and then for the presentation of the petition...
Friends, Associates Caroline Bowles
CB 's dealings with Blackwood's led to a positive working relationship with editor John Wilson . She also maintained a long correspondence with Anna Eliza Bray and (in later years) a shorter one with poet...
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
The Gentleman's Magazine's obituary for Bowles recalled that Chapters on Churchyardscontributed materially to establish her literary reputation and also showed powers of narrative fitting her for a popular and profitable branch of composition...
Publishing Caroline Bowles
In April 1835 CB 's review of Mary Howitt 's The Seven Temptations appeared in Blackwood's.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 332
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Byron and Wordsworth were important poetic influences. Books that Elizabeth Barrett owned and kept until her death included Philip James Bailey 's Festus, A Poem, a major text of the spasmodic school, L. E. L.
Friends, Associates Mary Cowden Clarke
In addition to meeting Dickens as a result of her theatrical activities, MCC and her husband met William Hazlitt through a shared duty of theatre reviewing, and she became friends with Mary Howitt , and...
Anthologization Mary Cowden Clarke
In 1848 MCC may have contributed two pieces to A Book of Stories for Young People, along with Mary Howitt and Anna Maria Hall . But Richard D. Altick believes the stories The Princess...
Literary responses Eliza Cook
An 1848 preface to a US edition of her poems ranked EC 's popularity almost as high as that of Felicia Hemans or Caroline Norton . It characterises her work in terms of emotion and...

Timeline

8 May 1835: Hans Christian Andersen began publishing...

Writing climate item

8 May 1835

Hans Christian Andersen began publishing fairy tales, some collected and some of his own devising, in his native Danish.

1839: Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer's best-known...

Writing climate item

1839

Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer 's best-known domesticnovels, appeared; it was translated into English in 1843 by Mary Howitt as The Home, or Family Cares and Family Joys.

11 October 1845: A translated edition of Emanuel Swedenborg's...

Building item

11 October 1845

A translated edition of Emanuel Swedenborg 's work The Principia was published in London; this form of spiritualism soon became popular in elite intellectual circles.

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...

National or international item

December 1855

Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.

1856: Fredrika Bremer's feminist novel Hertha stressed...

Writing climate item

1856

Fredrika Bremer 's feminist novelHertha stressed the need for women's independence; it appeared in an English translation by Mary Howitt the same year.

14 March 1856: A petition for Reform of the Married Women's...

National or international item

14 March 1856

A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.

April 1862: The Senate of the University of London voted...

Building item

April 1862

The Senate of the University of London voted against allowing women into their medical degree programme.

18 August 1882: The Married Women's Property Act gave women...

National or international item

18 August 1882

The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.

Texts

Howitt, Mary. A Popular History of the United States of America. Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859.
Howitt, Mary. Ballads and Other Poems. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847.
Howitt, Mary, editor. Biographical Sketches of the Queens of Great Britain. Henry G. Bohn, 1851.
Howitt, Mary. Birds and Flowers, and other Country Things. Darton and Clark, 1838.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt, editors. Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress. W. Lovett.
Howitt, Mary. “Howitt, Mary: Ballads (1847)”. University of Alberta: Individual Literature Collections (Chadwyck-Healey): English Poetry, Second Edition.
Howitt, Mary. “Howitt, Mary: Tales in Verse (1865)”. University of Alberta: Individual Literature Collections (Chadwyck-Healey): English Poetry, Second Edition, New Edition.
Howitt, Mary. Hymns and Fireside Verses. Darton and Clark, 1839.
Goldschmidt, Meïr Aron. Jacob Bendixen. Translator Howitt, Mary, Colburn, 1852.
Howitt, Mary. Marion’s Pilgrimage, A Fire-side Story, and Other Poems. Darton, 1859.
Howitt, Mary. Mary Howitt’s Illustrated Library for the Young. W. Kent, 1856.
Howitt, Mary. Mary Howitt: An Autobiography. Editor Howitt, Margaret, W. Isbister, 1889.
Howitt, Mary. My Own Story; or, The Autobiography of a Child. Thomas Tegg, 1845.
Andersen, Hans Christian. Only a Fiddler!. Translator Howitt, Mary, R. Bentley, 1845.
Howitt, Mary. Our Cousins in Ohio. Barton, 1849.
Howitt, Mary. Sketches of Natural History. E. Smith, 1834.
Howitt, Anna Mary et al. “Some Passages from the Child-life of Lucy Meridyth”. The Golden Casket, edited by Mary Howitt, James Hogg and Sons, 1861.
Howitt, Mary. Tales in Verse. William Darton and Son, 1836.
Howitt, Mary, and John Absolon. The Children’s Year. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847.
Howitt, Mary. The Cost of Caergwyn. 1864.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt. The Desolation of Eyam. Wightman and Cramp, 1827.
Howitt, Mary. The Dial of Love. Darton, 1853.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt. The Forest Minstrel, and Other Poems. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1823.
Howitt, Mary. The Heir of Wast-Wayland. T. Hodgson, 1847.
Andersen, Hans Christian. The Improvisatore. Translator Howitt, Mary, R. Bentley, Moyes and Barclay, 1845.