Mary Howitt

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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.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of the aged Mary Howitt. She is dressed in black: a dark hood covers her grey hair and white cap; her black, patterned cloak, tied with dark ribbons, covers a dark dress buttoned in front. Her eyes are cast down.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Anthologization Barbara Hofland
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
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.
95
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith , Christina Rossetti , Elizabeth Siddal , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Anna Mary Howitt , and Mary Howitt conducted a series of seances at the Hermitage, the Howitt family home.
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 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...
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.
24
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 43-7.
44
According to CM 's...
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Mary Howitt
AMH 's mother, Mary Howitt , became a well-known and much-loved writer in many genres, particularly for children.
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...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Gaskell
One happy result of this expansion of her sphere was the cementing of her friendship with Mary and William Howitt .
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
219
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Gaskell
She also liked to escape from Manchester when she was able to. She spent the evening of Christmas 1850 at William and Mary Howitt 's home in London swapping ghost stories with them and Eliza Meteyard .
Mitchell, Sally. The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women’s Reading 1835-1880. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1981.
32
Friends, Associates Eliza Meteyard
She became connected through her writing to Douglas Jerrold , Mary and William Howitt , and Harriet Martineau .
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press, 1970.
The difficulties of social life for unattached women are visible in her regret and anxiety over...

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...

National or international item

December 1855

Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
78-9
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 1989.
32-3
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby, 1995.
245-8

1856: Fredrika Bremer's feminist novel Hertha stressed...

Writing climate item

1856

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.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
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.
Goldschmidt, Meïr Aron. Jacob Bendixen. Translator Howitt, Mary, Colburn, 1852, 3 vols.
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, 2 vols.
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, 3 vols.
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, 3 vols.
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, 2 vols.