Margaret Harkness

-
MH wrote late Victorian novels, mostly set in the East End slums of London, that express her political ideas. She was an ardent socialist in the 1880s and 1890s and was also a journalist. Moderately successful in her own lifetime (some historians claim she outsold George Gissing ), she is now mostly remembered for the fact that Friedrich Engels commented on her first novel. Most of her work appeared under the masculine pseudonym John Law. Later in life, after becoming disillusioned with radical politics, she wrote travel books about India and Ceylon, as well as a novel set there.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders print of Margaret Harkness full face, wearing a high-necked blouse or dress, hair back behind her ears.

Milestones

28 February 1854
Margaret Elise Harkness was born at either Great Malvern or Upton on Severn in Worcestershire.
She is listed as unmarried and aged twenty-six in the British census of 1881. The Feminist Companion erroneously dates her birth as 1861.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Bellamy, Joyce M., and John Saville, editors. Dictionary of Labour Biography. Macmillan, 1972.
viii: 103
By 30 April 1887
Margaret Harkness , as John Law, published her first and best-known book, the novel A City Girl.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3105 (1887): 572
April 1888
Friedrich Engels wrote to Margaret Harkness about her novelA City Girl, which she had submitted to him for commentary: despite some criticism, he called it a small work of art and emphasised his pleasure in reading it.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Marx, Engels: On Literature and Art. Progress Publishers, 1976.
89-90
By early September 1921
MH 's final novel (as John Law) appeared: a study of the possibility of pacifism entitled A Curate's Promise, A Story of Three Weeks, September 14 - October 5, 1917.
Sypher, Eileen. “The Novels of Margaret Harkness”. Turn-of-the-Century Women, No. 2, pp. 12 -6.
26n8
British Library Catalogue.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012].
1024 (1 September 1921): 566
10 December 1923
MH died at the Pensione Castagnoli in Florence.
Bellamy, Joyce M., and John Saville, editors. Dictionary of Labour Biography. Macmillan, 1972.
viii: 110

Biography

Birth and Family

28 February 1854
Margaret Elise Harkness was born at either Great Malvern or Upton on Severn in Worcestershire.
She is listed as unmarried and aged twenty-six in the British census of 1881. The Feminist Companion erroneously dates her birth as 1861.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Bellamy, Joyce M., and John Saville, editors. Dictionary of Labour Biography. Macmillan, 1972.
viii: 103

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials.
Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe