Anne Manning

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AM published, from mid-nineteenth century onwards, over fifty titles. She is most famous for her historical novels, some of them issued as a pastiche of documents centuries old. She also wrote a series of novels of domestic, provincial, contemporary life, and turned her hand also to many other genres: religious, devotional, and philosophical works, history, short fiction, biography, autobiography. In addition, she edited a couple of works by Beatrice Braithwaite Batty .

Milestones

17 February 1807

AM was born in London, the eldest child in a large family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
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1826

AM was still in her teens when her first book appeared (anonymous like almost all her work): A Sister's Gift, Conversations on Sacred Subjects, intended for the amusement of the younger branches of her family on Sundays.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1849

AM 's first major historical novel appeared anonymously: The Maiden & Married Life of Mary Powell, Afterwards Mistress Milton. Framed as a journal kept by the poet John Milton 's first wife, it remains her best-known work.
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.

1876

AM published her final novel, An Idyl of the Alps, still using her designation of the author of Mary Powell.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

14 September 1879

AM died in her early seventies, at her sister's house at Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Biography

Birth and Family

17 February 1807

AM was born in London, the eldest child in a large family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
211