Margaret Roberts

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MR wrote from youth until old age, mostly during the later nineteenth century. She usually remained anonymous, though she did eventually give permission to the firm of Tauchnitz to put her name on some of their editions of her novels. She produced at least thirty-eight books, including children's writing and non-fiction (from biography and history to grammar). Most of her novels have foreign settings and characters; most are historical, and carefully researched in the British Museum , with every detail (of dress, for instance) carefully verified.
Avery, Gillian, and Margaret Roberts. “Introduction”. Banning and Blessing, Gollancz, 1967, pp. 7 - 8.
7
Harris, Mary J. Y. Memoirs of Frances Mary Peard. W. H. Smith, 1930.
15-16

Milestones

1833
MR was born at Honyngs in North Wales.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
1857
MR issued, anonymously, at both London and New York, the earliest book identified as hers: Summerleigh Manor; or, Brothers and Sisters, designed, as her preface mentions, for young readers.
The identification is Gillian Avery 's.
Avery, Gillian, and Margaret Roberts. “Introduction”. Banning and Blessing, Gollancz, 1967, pp. 7 - 8.
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Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
By 17 March 1860
MR was in her twenties when she published, anonymously, her earliest success, Mademoiselle Mori, which she had first written in Italian and then translated.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870.
1690 (17 March 1860): 373
October 1906
MR 's final book, appeared (as by the author of Madmoiselle Mori): a study of Saint Catherine of Siena and Her Times, which was commissioned from her by Methuen when she was over seventy.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Harris, Mary J. Y. Memoirs of Frances Mary Peard. W. H. Smith, 1930.
16
1919
MR died in her eighties, at Territet near Montreux in Switzerland.
Harris, Mary J. Y. Memoirs of Frances Mary Peard. W. H. Smith, 1930.
17

Biography

Birth and Family

1833
MR was born at Honyngs in North Wales.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

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