Harriet Hamilton King

10 February 1840 - 01 January 1920

HHK , a deeply religious woman, published primarily during the second half of the nineteenth century and focused many of her writings on her lifelong passions: the struggle for Italian nationalism and the revolutionary figures behind the movement. Her principal genre was poetry, of which she produced seven volumes, some appearing in more than ten editions. She also wrote biographical works on her idol and beloved friend, Giuseppe Mazzini .

Milestones

10 February 1840

Harriet Eleanor Baillie Hamilton, later King , was born in Edinburgh.

Miles, Alfred H., editor. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. AMS Press.

Around 1859

HHK began work on her first significant poem, The Execution of Felice Orsini, which paid homage to the Italian nationalist movement.

Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.

Armstrong, Isobel et al., editors. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets. Clarendon Press.

1 December 1873

HHK published The Disciples (written at the request of Mazzini , who had died the previous year), a five-part historical and political poem about the struggle for a unified Italian Republic.

Miles, Alfred H., editor. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. AMS Press.

Rudman, Harry William. Italian Nationalism and English Letters. AMS Press.

164

January 1913

HHK 's final publication, her controversial essay The Religion of Mazzini, appeared in the Dublin Review.

Rudman, Harry William. Italian Nationalism and English Letters. AMS Press.

165n

1920

After suffering from sustained periods of serious illness

Armstrong, Isobel et al., editors. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets. Clarendon Press.

for at least eight years, HHK died.

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.

Biography

Birth and Family

10 February 1840

Harriet Eleanor Baillie Hamilton, later King , was born in Edinburgh.

Miles, Alfred H., editor. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. AMS Press.