Hannah Mary Rathbone

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HMR was an early Victorian anthologist, poet, novelist, memoirist, and religious writer, who also contributed to periodicals.

Milestones

5 July 1798

Hannah Mary Reynolds (later HMR ) was born, at Ketley, near Wellington in Shropshire, into the middle of a family of seven children.
“Papers of the Family of Richard Rathbone (RP VII)”. University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections and Archives: The Rathbone Papers.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

By 25 May 1844

HMR anonymously published her best-known work: a fiction in the guise of a historical document, The Diary of Lady Willoughby. This first volume was to accumulate various additions and revisions.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
865 (1844): 471

28 August 1858

HMR published, with her name and a reminder of her famous fictional diary, a poetry volume entitled The Strawberry Girl, with other thoughts and fancies in verse.
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.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

26 March 1878

HMR died at nearly eighty years old, having outlived her husband by eighteen years.
“Papers of the Family of Richard Rathbone (RP VII)”. University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections and Archives: The Rathbone Papers.

Biography

Birth and Family

5 July 1798

Hannah Mary Reynolds (later HMR ) was born, at Ketley, near Wellington in Shropshire, into the middle of a family of seven children.
“Papers of the Family of Richard Rathbone (RP VII)”. University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections and Archives: The Rathbone Papers.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.