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, 1992.
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, 1992.
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
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
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, 1993.
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
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, 1992.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
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, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 281
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
's pamphlet Mesmerism: A Letter to Miss Martineau, argued that if the account...
Among her few writing friends were Mary Howitt
and her relations by marriage Mary
and Anna Sewell
. She greatly admired without personally knowing Elizabeth Fry
, and felt a personal connection to Charlotte Brontë
Timeline
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.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Bredsdorff, Elias. Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of His Life and Work, 1805-75. Souvenir, 1993.
120-1
1839: Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer's best-known...
Writing climate item
1839
Hemmet, one of Fredrika Bremer
's best-known domestic novels, appeared; it was translated into English in 1843 by Mary Howitt
as The Home, or Family Cares and Family Joys.
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.
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.
Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Nineteenth-Century England. Virago, 1989.
21
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.
937 (11 October 1845)
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.
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press, 1952.
122
December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...
Fredrika Bremer
's feminist novel Hertha stressed the need for women's independence; it appeared in an English translation by Mary Howitt
the same year.
The Fredrika Bremer Association. http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20080201023636/http://www.fredrikabremer.se/site/english.
14 March 1856: A petition for Reform of the Married Women's...
National or international item
14 March 1856
A petition for 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.
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 1989.
32, 35
Helsinger, Elizabeth K. et al. The Woman Question. Garland, 1983.
2: 14
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London, 1992.
208
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
214
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.
Blake, Catriona, and Wendy Savage. The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry to the Medical Profession. Women’s Press, 1990.
62
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.
Holcombe, Lee. Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England. University of Toronto Press, 1983.
256
Soldon, Norbert. Women in British Trade Unions 1874-1976. Gill and Macmillan, 1978.
7
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
82
Hurwitz, Edith F., and Renate Bridenthal. “The International Sisterhood”. Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Claudia Koonz, Houghton Mifflin, 1977, pp. 325-4.
353
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, 1990.
“Property Rights of Women”. What You Need to Know About Women’s History.
Blackstone, Sir William, and Edward Christian. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 15th ed., Vol.
4 vols.
, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1809.
Roberts, Marie Mulvey, and Tamae Mizuta, editors. The Wives: The Rights of Married Women. Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994, http://University of Waterloo - Porter.
Lacey, Candida Ann, editor. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group. Routledge, 1987.
Texts
Howitt, Mary. A Popular History of the United States of America. Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859, 2 vols.
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, 3 vols.
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.