Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Howitt
-
Standard Name: Howitt, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Botham
Married Name: Mary Howitt
Pseudonym: Wilfreda
Between them, Mary Howitt
and her husband William
wrote and published over 180 books. Hers alone, at her death, occupied forty pages of the British Museum
printed catalogue.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
1, 261
Bearing the expenses of a large family, they needed to harness their literary productivity to earning potential.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
1, 134-5
As an opportunistic writer in several low-status, low-cost genres, accustomed to placing the same work in several successive venues, MH
left a complex, even confusing bibliography, not yet reduced to order by scholars.
BH
seems to have remained saleable for a long time, since The Gift of Friendship . . . with contributions by . . . Mrs. Hofland appeared as late as 1877. Others included were Mary Howitt
Anthologization
Elizabeth Gaskell
EG
first reached print alone when her gothic sketch Clopton Hall was included in Mary
and William Howitt
's Visits to Remarkable Places.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
37
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.
637 (11 January 1840): 34-6
Anthologization
Anna Mary Howitt
Anna Mary Howitt (now Watts)
, as the author of An Art-Student in Munich, contributed Some Passages from the Child-life of Lucy Meridyth to an anthology compiled by her mother, Mary Howitt
: The...
Anthologization
Mary Cowden Clarke
In 1848 MCC
may have contributed two pieces to A Book of Stories for Young People, along with Mary Howitt
and Anna Maria Hall
. But Richard D. Altick
believes the stories The Princess...
Birth
Anna Mary Howitt
AMH
was born, the first child of writers Mary
and William Howitt
to be delivered alive, though Mary had been four times pregnant since her marriage in 1821.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
97
Dedications
Anna Mary Howitt
She wrote a warmly affectionate dedication to her parents, William
and Mary Howitt
. A US edition appeared the following year; a second edition was dated 1880.
The work has appeared in German as Herrliche...
Education
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Mary Howitt
, a friend of the Smith family, wrote approvingly of Benjamin Leigh Smith's unorthodox methods of childrearing: Objecting to schools he keeps his children at home, and their knowledge is gained by reading...
Family and Intimate relationships
Charlotte Mew
Young Charlotte developed an adolescent crush on her headmistress, Lucy Harrison
, who was a niece of writer Mary Howitt
, a charismatic Quaker, and a scholar of English literature.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
AMH
's mother, Mary Howitt
, became a well-known and much-loved writer in many genres, particularly for children.
Family and Intimate relationships
Dinah Mulock Craik
DMC
adopted her daughter, who had been abandoned, from a parish workhouse. Mary Howitt
wrote a feeling account of the first discovery of the baby lying on a builders' sand-heap at 5 a.m. on the...
Fictionalization
Harriet Martineau
Mary Russell Mitford
wrote disapprovingly of HM
's claims: I see no good in these experiments.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 281
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
's pamphlet Mesmerism: A Letter to Miss Martineau, argued that if the account...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Bowles
CB
's dealings with Blackwood's led to a positive working relationship with editor John Wilson
. She also maintained a long correspondence with Anna Eliza Bray
and (in later years) a shorter one with poet...
Friends, Associates
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a result of his lecture tours, he became one of the most prominent American intellectuals in Britain, and was personally connected to numerous writers including Jane Carlyle
and Mary Howitt
.
Friends, Associates
Felicia Hemans
FH
's literary correspondents and friends included Grace Aguilar
, Joanna Baillie
(whose Beacon she recalled reading when very young), and Mary Howitt
.
Elwood, Anne Katharine. Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England, from the Commencement of the Last Century. Henry Colburn.
238
Chorley, Henry Fothergill. Memorials of Mrs. Hemans. Saunders and Otley.
8 May 1835: Hans Christian Andersen began publishing...
Writing climate item
8 May 1835
Hans Christian Andersen
began publishing fairy tales, some collected and some of his own devising, in his native Danish.
1839: Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer's best-known...
Writing climate item
1839
Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer
's best-known domesticnovels, appeared; it was translated into English in 1843 by Mary Howitt
as The Home, or Family Cares and Family Joys.
11 October 1845: A translated edition of Emanuel Swedenborg's...
Building item
11 October 1845
A translated edition of Emanuel Swedenborg
's work The Principia was published in London; this form of spiritualism soon became popular in elite intellectual circles.
17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...
Building item
17 February 1847
The Whittington Club
(named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.
December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...
Fredrika Bremer
's feminist novelHertha stressed the need for women's independence; it appeared in an English translation by Mary Howitt
the same year.
14 March 1856: A petition for Reform of the Married Women's...
National or international item
14 March 1856
A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee
and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
April 1862: The Senate of the University of London voted...
Building item
April 1862
The Senate of the University of London voted against allowing women into their medical degree programme.
18 August 1882: The Married Women's Property Act gave women...
National or international item
18 August 1882
The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.
Texts
Howitt, Mary. A Popular History of the United States of America. Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859.
Howitt, Mary. Ballads and Other Poems. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847.
Howitt, Mary, editor. Biographical Sketches of the Queens of Great Britain. Henry G. Bohn, 1851.
Howitt, Mary. Birds and Flowers, and other Country Things. Darton and Clark, 1838.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt, editors. Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress. W. Lovett.
Howitt, Mary. “Howitt, Mary: Ballads (1847)”. University of Alberta: Individual Literature Collections (Chadwyck-Healey): English Poetry, Second Edition.
Howitt, Mary. “Howitt, Mary: Tales in Verse (1865)”. University of Alberta: Individual Literature Collections (Chadwyck-Healey): English Poetry, Second Edition, New Edition.
Howitt, Mary. Hymns and Fireside Verses. Darton and Clark, 1839.
Goldschmidt, Meïr Aron. Jacob Bendixen. Translator Howitt, Mary, Colburn, 1852.
Howitt, Mary. Marion’s Pilgrimage, A Fire-side Story, and Other Poems. Darton, 1859.
Howitt, Mary. Mary Howitt’s Illustrated Library for the Young. W. Kent, 1856.
Howitt, Mary. Mary Howitt: An Autobiography. Editor Howitt, Margaret, W. Isbister, 1889.
Howitt, Mary. My Own Story; or, The Autobiography of a Child. Thomas Tegg, 1845.
Andersen, Hans Christian. Only a Fiddler!. Translator Howitt, Mary, R. Bentley, 1845.
Howitt, Mary. Our Cousins in Ohio. Barton, 1849.
Howitt, Mary. Sketches of Natural History. E. Smith, 1834.
Howitt, Anna Mary et al. “Some Passages from the Child-life of Lucy Meridyth”. The Golden Casket, edited by Mary Howitt, James Hogg and Sons, 1861.
Howitt, Mary. Tales in Verse. William Darton and Son, 1836.
Howitt, Mary, and John Absolon. The Children’s Year. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847.
Howitt, Mary. The Cost of Caergwyn. 1864.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt. The Desolation of Eyam. Wightman and Cramp, 1827.
Howitt, Mary. The Dial of Love. Darton, 1853.
Howitt, William, and Mary Howitt. The Forest Minstrel, and Other Poems. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1823.
Howitt, Mary. The Heir of Wast-Wayland. T. Hodgson, 1847.
Andersen, Hans Christian. The Improvisatore. Translator Howitt, Mary, R. Bentley, Moyes and Barclay, 1845.