Isabella Banks

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IB was a prolific author first of poetry, then of journalism, and later of many novels. She was well-known as a regional novelist, setting many of her books in early nineteenth-century Manchester and the north of England. Her novels and poetry exhibit several instances of an overall belief in the march of progress, with strong messages about how England has advanced during the Victorian period, along with exhortations to the working class to improve their lot through hard work and duty.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Isabella Banks by Done and Ball of London. She has her head slightly tilted under a hat with frill edges and bows for ornament, with a large one under her chin holding it on. She has grey hair and thin wire-framed glasses.

Milestones

25 March 1821

Isabella Varley (later IB ) was born at a house in Oldham Street in Manchester.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

12 April 1837

At the age of sixteen, Isabella Varley (the later IB ) published her first poem, A Dying Girl to Her Mother, in the Manchester Guardian.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
128

By 5 February 1876

After previously serialising The Manchester Man in Cassell's Family Magazine, IB published it in volume form: it became her best-known novel.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2519 (1876): 196
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
93

9 February 1878

IB 's first contribution to the Notes and Queries section of the newly founded Manchester City News appeared, entitled Boggart Hole Clough after an area in Manchester.
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
35, 157

February 1893

IB published her last two novels: Bond Slaves: The Story of a Struggle, about the Luddite Rebellion, and The Slowly Grinding Mills, whose title is borrowed from a line by Longfellow .
Luddite violence began in earnest in Nottinghamshire in 1811. Longfellow wrote (in a translation from the German of Friedrich von Logau ), the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

5 May 1897

IB died at Dalston in London; she was buried next to her husband.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
122

Biography

Birth, Family, Social Background

25 March 1821

Isabella Varley (later IB ) was born at a house in Oldham Street in Manchester.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

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