Mary Ward

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Standard Name: Ward, Mary
Birth Name: Joan Ward
Self-constructed Name: Mary Ward
Self-constructed Name: Marie
Self-constructed Name: Felice
Self-constructed Name: Phillis
Self-constructed Name: Margery
Self-constructed Name: The Old Woman
Self-constructed Name: Maria della Guardia
MW , seventeenth-century religious reformer and founder of a religious Order, used her writings (letters, autobiography, prayers, notes, and speeches) as a means to forward her radical ecclesiastical administration. She also wrote devotional works for her own spiritual life, and familiar letters.
Oval-framed portrait of Mary Ward. She is wearing a smooth white cap that covers her whole head, and dark clothing with a white collar. An inscription mostly in Latin, with a single German word, reads above the picture "Institut Beatae Mariae Virginis" and below "Gründerin [Founder] Maria Ward 1585-1645."

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Penelope Aubin
Living in Hammersmith, she and her mother were close neighbours of the queen dowager, Catherine of Braganza , and of a convent and girls' school run by the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the...
Literary responses Margery Kempe
The year 2018 was a high point in MK studies, with the first academic conference devoted to her, and the establishment of the Margery Kempe Society . Diane Watt summarized the growth of her reputation...
Literary Setting Charlotte Dacre
This dedication was a manifesto of allegiance not to feminine terror but to the full-blown masculine horror Gothic.
The setting implies the convent of the Poor Clares of St Omer, where religious leader Mary Ward
Reception Grace, Lady Mildmay
Warnicke says this text is significant as the earliest autobiography written, as opposed to dictated, by an Englishwoman.
Warnicke, Retha M. “Lady Mildmay’s Journal: A Study in Autobiography and Meditation in Reformation England”. Sixteenth Century Journal, No. 1, pp. 55 -68.
55
Though this is at least arguable, its early date does add to its value.
Even if...
Textual Features Muriel Jaeger
MJ here relates the lives of five people who succeeded in living according to [c]oherent schemes of human behaviour, putting into practice their own theories of the good life. Cato (The Stoic) and George Sand...

Timeline

5 November 1686
Mother Frances Bedingfield (using, for safety, the alias Frances Long) signed the contract for the purchase of property on the site of the present Bar Convent in York, to use as a girls' school .