Anna Maria Hall

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AMH was an extremely prolific writer whose literary career spanned the pre- and later Victorian periods. She wrote many stories, nine novels, some children's literature, three plays, a pamphlet, and a travel book. She also worked as an editor and wrote several pieces in support of the temperance movement. Her fiction participated in mid-century debates over the plight of governesses and the position of women generally. Much of her work served to sustain stereotypes of Irish national character.
Black and white print of a portrait of Anna Maria Hall painted by Henry Thomas Ryall in the 1830s. She sits in a chair looking down and to the left, wearing a dark dress with a V neck, with flowers at her bosom and a crucifix hanging below. Her dark hair, parted in the middle, falls in short ringlets adorned with a large rose. She has a watch on her right wrist and holds a book in both hands. National Gallery of Wales.

Milestones

6 January 1800

Anna Maria Fielding (later AMH ) was born in Anne Street, Dublin.
Hall, Samuel Carter. Retrospect of a Long Life: From 1815 to 1883. D. Appleton.
548

January 1829

AMH published an Irish sketch, Master Ben, in The Spirit and Manners of the Age, a periodical edited by her husband Samuel Carter Hall .
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Sage, Lorna, editor. The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. Cambridge University Press.

By 29 February 1840

AMH published a three-volume novel, Marian; or, A Young Maid's Fortunes.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
644 (1840): 171

1875

One of AMH 's final publications was an illustrated collection of temperance stories titled Boons and Blessings.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that her last publication appeared only months before her death, that is in 1880, though the British Library Catalogue lists no monographs of this year.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

30 January 1881

AMH died at her home, Devon Lodge in East Molesey, Surrey, aged eighty-one.
Hall, Samuel Carter. Retrospect of a Long Life: From 1815 to 1883. D. Appleton.
574
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Family and Childhood

6 January 1800

Anna Maria Fielding (later AMH ) was born in Anne Street, Dublin.
Hall, Samuel Carter. Retrospect of a Long Life: From 1815 to 1883. D. Appleton.
548

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