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.
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...
Literary responses
Anna Mary Howitt
Mary Howitt
called the Boadicea picture very fine, truly sublime.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
216
Ruskin
had demanded in a letter: What do you know about Boadicea? Leave such subjects alone and paint me a pheasant's wing.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
Mary Howitt
prophesied that EM
's piece on the Protection of Women would cause that little sneakJohn Saunders
(founder of the People's Journal, from whom the Howitts split when they launched Howitt's Journal...
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...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
When Reeve
later retold the Charoba story in The Progress of Romance, 1785, it was as a specimen of the genre, with implicit reference to some of Rowe's critical points. William Howitt
(born in...
Material Conditions of Writing
Margaret Oliphant
MO
kept writing through the difficult years of her married life, through poverty, her husband's illness and her children's deaths, although fellow-writer Mary Howitt
tried to frighten her with the story that too much mental...
Occupation
Louisa Anne Meredith
While living on the east coast she had continued in her activities as a naturalist and became, through correspondence, acquainted with notable scientists in Europe and Australia. With them she discussed her collection of insects...
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...
Occupation
Hannah Kilham
HK
worked as a Sunday school teacher before her marriage. As a widow she both taught and set up schools of her own, at Nottingham and Sheffield. Later she set up two schools in Sierra...
Occupation
Sarah Stickney Ellis
SSE
supported her husband's missionary activities, helped edit his writings, and worked with him to promote temperance. She felt uneasy about her role as minister's wife and the invisibility which it brought; when she agreed...
Scholar Kathryn Gleadle
calls this radical unitarian club a unique, feminist experiment in adult...
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...
politics
Agnes Strickland
AS
was a romantic or imaginative supporter of the Cavaliers and Jacobites of the past, but in practical terms she was a conservative. When Mary Howitt
asked her to support a petition to parliament about...
Publishing
Anna Mary Howitt
During her time in Munich and her briefer time in Oberammergau, AMH
wrote articles which were published in the Ladies' Companion, the Athenæum, and Household Words. Her description of the Oberammergau passion...
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
Through a contact of Mary Howitt
, EG
published a number of stories in the AmericanSartain's Union Magazine, including one of English domestic life entitled The Last Generation in England, that appeared...