Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
Her travels in England introduced her to Mary Howitt
and Thomas Carlyle
, and she visited her old acquaintance Harriet Martineau
. In Paris she had significant meetings with George Sand
and the Polish poet...
Friends, Associates
Ellen Wood
As she began to establish herself as a writer, EW
became a friend of her fellow authors Anna Maria Hall
, Julia Kavanagh
, and Mary Howitt
. The latter wrote her a complimentary letter...
Friends, Associates
Mary Russell Mitford
She knew most of the literary women of her day, including Felicia Hemans
(who wrote to ask her for an autograph),
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 213
Friends, Associates
Jessie White Mario
In old age JWM
was attentive to William Howitt
in his last illness. Margaret
, younger daughter of William and Mary Howitt
, duly visited her in return. Margaret gave her relations a vivid account...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Gaskell
EG
wrote Mary Barton following the death of her ten-month-old son in 1845. Johann Ludwig Uhland
's Auf der Überfahrt, from which she takes one of her epigraphs, refers to two from the spirit-land...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dinah Mulock Craik
Sally Mitchell
compares The Head of the Family to the large-cast family story
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Eleanor Trollope
The Trollopes' collaborative work, whose title was influenced by William
and Mary Howitt
's Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, is a collection of previously written articles, all concerning Italian literary...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Loudon
While deliberately selecting flowers for their aesthetic qualities, she expresses a wish for botany to become a subject as common in girls' schools as French and music.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago.
41
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1333 (1853): 584-5
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.
Leisure and Society
Eliza Meteyard
She belonged to the Whittington Club
, where Mary Howitt
urged her in November 1846 to speak to the company.
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press.
123
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold
responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet.
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press.
299
Mary Howitt
came to regret her contribution to the most awful book that...