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.
She also liked to escape from Manchester when she was able to. She spent the evening of Christmas 1850 at William
and Mary Howitt
's home in London swapping ghost stories with them and Eliza Meteyard
.
Mitchell, Sally. The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women’s Reading 1835-1880. Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
32
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...
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...
Reception
Elizabeth Gaskell
Around the time of Ruth's appearance, Swedish novelist and feminist Fredrika Bremer
(who was probably introduced to EG
by William
and Mary Howitt
) wrote: Dear Elizabeth, dear sister in spirit, if I may...
Anthologization
Elizabeth Gaskell
EG
first reached print alone when her gothic sketch Clopton Hall was included in Mary
and William Howitt
's Visits to Remarkable Places.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
37
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
637 (11 January 1840): 34-6
Travel
Margaret Fuller
In order to pay for this trip, MF
wrote a column titled Things and Thoughts in Europe. In this capacity she travelled through England, Scotland, France and Italy at a time when...
Friends, Associates
Margaret Fuller
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a result of his lecture tours, he became one of the most prominent American intellectuals in Britain, and was personally connected to numerous writers including Jane Carlyle
and Mary Howitt
.
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...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Stickney Ellis
Among her few writing friends were Mary Howitt
and her relations by marriage Mary
and Anna Sewell
. She greatly admired without personally knowing Elizabeth Fry
, and felt a personal connection to Charlotte Brontë
Textual Features
Amelia B. Edwards
The pieces are, as the author notes, mostly short pieces designed for music, and suitable for drawing-room performance. Several are translated or adapted from French; many have male speakers, as Euridice is a dramatic monologue...
CC
's friends and acquaintances were varying and numerous. In her youth the radical politician John Cartwright
was a neighbour. Her literary work as an adult led to the formation of a number of lasting...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Camilla Crosland
Since she was well-connected in London literary circles, she was able to include in her memoir recollections of time spent working with the annuals and of literary figures such as Grace Aguilar
, Lady Blessington
Family and Intimate relationships
Dinah Mulock Craik
DMC
adopted her daughter, who had been abandoned, from a parish workhouse. Mary Howitt
wrote a feeling account of the first discovery of the baby lying on a builders' sand-heap at 5 a.m. on the...