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.
The Gentleman's Magazine's obituary for Bowles recalled that Chapters on Churchyardscontributed materially to establish her literary reputation and also showed powers of narrative fitting her for a popular and profitable branch of composition...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
When Reeve
later retold the Charoba story in The Progress of Romance, 1785, it was as a specimen of the genre, with implicit reference to some of Rowe's critical points. William Howitt
(born in...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold
responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet.
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press.
299
Mary Howitt
came to regret her contribution to the most awful book that...
Literary responses
Eliza Cook
An 1848 preface to a US edition of her poems ranked EC
's popularity almost as high as that of Felicia Hemans
or Caroline Norton
. It characterises her work in terms of emotion and...
Literary responses
Anna Mary Howitt
Mary Howitt
called the Boadicea picture very fine, truly sublime.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
216
Ruskin
had demanded in a letter: What do you know about Boadicea? Leave such subjects alone and paint me a pheasant's wing.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
MO
kept writing through the difficult years of her married life, through poverty, her husband's illness and her children's deaths, although fellow-writer Mary Howitt
tried to frighten her with the story that too much mental...
Occupation
Hannah Kilham
HK
worked as a Sunday school teacher before her marriage. As a widow she both taught and set up schools of her own, at Nottingham and Sheffield. Later she set up two schools in Sierra...
Occupation
Sarah Stickney Ellis
SSE
supported her husband's missionary activities, helped edit his writings, and worked with him to promote temperance. She felt uneasy about her role as minister's wife and the invisibility which it brought; when she agreed...
Occupation
Louisa Anne Meredith
While living on the east coast she had continued in her activities as a naturalist and became, through correspondence, acquainted with notable scientists in Europe and Australia. With them she discussed her collection of insects...
Occupation
Hans Christian Andersen
At the age of eleven, HCA
began working in factories; he later became an apprentice shoemaker. Although trained as an actor and singer, he is best known for his work as a playwright, novelist, and...
Scholar Kathryn Gleadle
calls this radical unitarian club a unique, feminist experiment in adult...
politics
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
At the meeting the female members of the first Married Women's Property Committee
confirmed the text of BLSB
's parliamentary petition and planned for a signature crusade and then for the presentation of the petition...
politics
Agnes Strickland
AS
was a romantic or imaginative supporter of the Cavaliers and Jacobites of the past, but in practical terms she was a conservative. When Mary Howitt
asked her to support a petition to parliament about...
Publishing
Christina Rossetti
In the four months following the end of her engagement to James Collinson
no new poems were entered in her notebook, but the broken engagement was not necessarily the cause, since there are several other...
Publishing
Eliza Meteyard
It was her earnings from this book, said Mary Howitt
, that served to set up a younger brother in Australia.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.