Menella Bute Smedley

14 November 1820 - 25 May 1877

MBS published or co-published around fifteen titles in various genres: stories, novels, poetry, and books for children, besides her contribution to parliamentary reports about pauper schools. Her poetry makes accomplished and at times innovative use of dramatic and lyric form in its treatment of historical and contemporary material. Her work is distinguished by its sensitive depictions of women's struggles for independent lives and effective action, its acute dissection of Victorian gender conventions, and its positive representations of feminism and unconventional femininity.

Milestones

By 14 November 1820

MBS was born in Wandsworth, South London, the last but one of five children, of whom four lived to grow up.

Smedley, Edward. Poems by the late Edward Smedley. Baldwin and Cradock.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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

8: 327

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.

By May 1849

At not yet thirty MBS , as S. M., published her first short novel, initially in Sharpe's London Magazine and then in a volume, The Maiden Aunt.

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

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.

The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.

25 May 1877

MBS died at her house in Park Road, Regent's Park, in her late fifties.

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

By 14 November 1820

MBS was born in Wandsworth, South London, the last but one of five children, of whom four lived to grow up.

Smedley, Edward. Poems by the late Edward Smedley. Baldwin and Cradock.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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

8: 327

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.