Mary Whateley Darwall

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MWD is an interesting minor poet from the middle ranks in middle England, who against the odds succeeded in reaching a public, and embraced many styles and themes over a career which lasted from the mid eighteenth into the early nineteenth century.
  • BirthName: Mary Whateley
  • Married: Darwall
  • Pseudonyms: Harriot Airy
    This pseudonym is variously spelled.
    Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
    20
    ; The Warwickshire Poetess
    This name must have been influenced by her association with Shenstone .

Milestones

Early 1738

Mary Whateley (later MWD ) was born at Beoley in Worcestershire, the ninth and youngest child of her parents; seven children survived.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
9, 11

21 June 1759

Mary Whateley (later Darwall) dated her earliest poem to be published: To my Garden.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
19-22

May 1760-February 1762

Liberty, by Mary Whateley (later Darwall) appeared in at least five newspapers or magazines.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
30

14 March 1801

MWD composed Lines in praise of her daughter Elizabeth 's travel journal: printed in the Monthly Magazine in June.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
200-1

1810

MWD 's daughter Elizabeth published The Storm with Other Poems, including probably four by her mother.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
199-200, 225

5 December 1825

MWD died at Walsall, where she had been living with a son's family.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
209

Biography

Birth and Family

Early 1738

Mary Whateley (later MWD ) was born at Beoley in Worcestershire, the ninth and youngest child of her parents; seven children survived.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
9, 11

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