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
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 Fredrika Bremer
On first sight of Mary Howitt's translation, FB sent her a letter of thanks and praise. Then, however, she discovered some personal comments remaining in the English version (including an apparently derogatory remark about someone...
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
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 Harriet Martineau
This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet.
qtd. in
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press, 1960.
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.
qtd. in
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press, 1955.
216
Ruskin had demanded in a letter: What do you know about Boadicea? Leave such subjects alone and paint me a pheasant's wing.
qtd. in
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press, 1955.
217
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Literary responses Eliza Meteyard
Mary Howitt prophesied that EM 's piece on the Protection of Women would cause that little sneakJohn Saunders (founder of the People's Journal, from whom the Howitts split when they launched Howitt's Journal...
Material Conditions of Writing Margaret Oliphant
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 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 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 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...
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 Matilda Hays
Other key figures involved included Charles Dickens , Giuseppe Mazzini , Mary and William Howitt , and Douglas Jerrold .
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Macmillan, 1995.
141
Scholar Kathryn Gleadle calls this radical unitarian club a unique, feminist experiment in adult...
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...

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