Mary Augusta Ward

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Standard Name: Ward, Mary Augusta
Birth Name: Mary Augusta Arnold
Married Name: Mary Augusta Ward
Pseudonym: Mrs Humphry Ward
Best known for her influential loss-of-faith novel Robert Elsmere, MAW was among the more prolific and popular novelists of the later Victorian and Edwardian periods. Her fifty-year career spanned an era of enormous transformation. During it she produced twenty-five novels, an autobiography, journalism (including reviews and literary criticism), a children's book, a translation, and several works of war propaganda. Her more serious earlier works were weighty novels of ideas in the tradition of George Eliot , which seek to chart the complex relationships among character, intellect, religion, and morality. Her work insistently takes up what she sees as the pressing social issues of her day, shifting in the early twentieth century to briefer works on a much wider geographical canvas and then taking up the war effort in both fiction and prose. It displays an abiding interest in the social, intellectual, and sexual relations between men and women. The education and occupations of women are recurrent themes, and Oxford with its intellectual ferment a common setting. Although MAW 's nationalism, imperialism, and anti-suffrage stance cast her as conservative to recent readers, she was a reformer, in her earlier years a democrat, and an acute analyst of gender who believed strongly in the currents of progress and the transformative power of texts.

Connections

Connections Sort ascending Author name Excerpt
Travel Gertrude Bell
During 1899 GB visited Mrs Humphry Ward in Rome. She also went to Athens with her father, where they watched David Hogarth working on an archaeological dig. She went home via Constantinople, Prague...
Travel Vernon Lee
VL was at this time a guest of Mary Robinson and her family. She combined her connections with theirs in order to meet a number of major cultural figures: Sir Leslie Stephen , Robert Browning
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Aldous Huxley
Critic John Sutherland reads this story as a comment on AH 's relations with Mary Augusta Ward , who was his aunt, godmother, and almost surrogate mother. In it the Greenow children are showered with...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Aldous Huxley
John Sutherland reads this as an indictment of Mary Augusta Ward for the suicide of AH 's brother Trevenen. The hero, Brian Foxe, is driven to suicide by his mother, Mrs Foxe: she inculcates in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Aldous Huxley
When Aunt Mary (aunt of the protagonist, Will Farnaby) dies horribly and bitterly of cancer, full of a hatred quite unlike her former, characteristic charity and courage, Sutherland reads her as a blend of...
Textual Production Beatrice Webb
BW returned to a topic she had already treated in a pamphlet when she edited The Case for the Factory Acts, with a preface by Mary Augusta Ward .
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.
Textual Production A. Mary F. Robinson
In the same year, 1894, AMFR contributed critical introductions to selections by Felicia Hemans and Joanna Baillie in The English Poets, edited by Humphry Ward (husband of the well-known novelist ).
Robinson, A. Mary F. et al. “Critical Introductions”. The English Poets, edited by Thomas Humphry Ward, New Edition, Macmillian, pp. 4: 221 -34.
4: ix-x
Textual Production Emma Jane Worboise
Thomas Arnold (1795-1842) was the grandfather of Mary Augusta Ward and was famous as headmaster of Rugby School .
Textual Production Charlotte Yonge
Its full title was The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the English Church. Its circulation ran at about 1,500. It had no staff, no office, no fixed day of publication...
Textual Production Emma Frances Brooke
EFB , as the Author of A Superfluous Woman, published Transition. A Novel, which connects feminist and socialist themes and which she intended as an antidote to Marcella by Mrs Humphry Ward ...
Textual Production Jan Morris
More than a decade later, in 1978, JM followed her own portrait of Oxford by editing The Oxford Book of Oxford, a quirky anthology of often very short anecdotes and other excerpts, aimed less...
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
MW has specialized in adapting and abridging novels for radio. Between 1980 and 2004 she adapted a wide array of fiction by women writers, including works by Jane Austen , Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Textual Features Ivy Compton-Burnett
The protagonist, a clergyman's daughter, lives up to her name. She is a child at her mother's graveside in the book's opening scene: by the age of thirty-three she has repeatedly sacrificed her hopes of...
Textual Features Sara Jeannette Duncan
The Imperialist features a double-stranded plot focusing on a Canadian brother and sister. Lorne Murchison pursues a connection with Britain through formal trade agreements while Advena Murchison unites the countries with bonds of affection when...
Textual Features Millicent Garrett Fawcett
The chapters which follow these address the difficulties in the suffrage campaign that were brought about by women themselves. A chapter on the anti-suffragists explains the thinking of a group of women led by Mrs Humphry Ward

Timeline

1832: Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's...

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1832

Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's Oxford bookselling and publishing business; as J. H. Parker it soon became the foremost publisher of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement.

November 1860: Thomas Hill Green became one of the first...

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November 1860

Thomas Hill Green became one of the first laymen to hold a fellowship at Balliol College .

9 August 1870: The Education Act established a national...

National or international item

9 August 1870

The Education Act established a national elementary education system governed by local school boards, to which women could be elected.

December 1874: French actress Sarah Bernhardt was in the...

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December 1874

French actress Sarah Bernhardt was in the first full tide of her success
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers.
157
in Paris.

1880: Thomas Humphry Ward published with Macmillan...

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1880

Thomas Humphry Ward published with Macmillan a highly successful four-volume anthology, The English Poets.

December 1882: Henri-Frédéric Amiel's Fragments d'un Journal...

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December 1882

Henri-Frédéric Amiel 's Fragments d'un Journal Intime was posthumously published in Geneva.

7 November 1885: The last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway...

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7 November 1885

The last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven in Eagle Pass, British Columbia, completing the transcontinental railway.

March 1887: Following his appointment as Chief Secretary,...

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March 1887

Following his appointment as Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour undertook a policy towards Ireland popularly characterized as killing Home Rule with kindness.

June 1889: Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against...

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June 1889

Nineteenth Century published An Appeal against Female Suffrage by Mary Augusta Ward , signed by 103 other women.

July 1889: Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the...

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July 1889

Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the Fortnightly Review to counter Mary Augusta Ward 's Appeal Against Female Suffrage in the previous month's Nineteenth Century.

1 July 1891: The International Copyright Act, known as...

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1 July 1891

The International Copyright Act, known as the Chace Act, came into force in the United States to protect the copyrights of foreign authors and end the longstanding practice of producing pirated editions of popular British...

1 July 1891: The International Copyright Act, known as...

Writing climate item

1 July 1891

The International Copyright Act, known as the Chace Act, came into force in the United States to protect the copyrights of foreign authors and end the longstanding practice of producing pirated editions of popular British...

November 1896: The Publishers Council objected to series...

Writing climate item

November 1896

The Publishers Council objected to series such as Popular New Novels, The Masterpiece Library, and the Review of Reviews, all of which published abridgements of popular novels and were edited by W. T. Stead .

1899: Josephine Ward published One Poor Scruple:...

Women writers item

1899

Josephine Ward published One Poor Scruple: A Seven Weeks' Story.

11 September 1905: The Times Book Club opened at 93 New Bond...

Writing climate item

11 September 1905

The Times Book Club opened at 93 New Bond Street, London, and quickly ran afoul of the Net Book Agreement.

Texts

Ward, Mary Augusta. ’Missing’. W. Collins, 1917.
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers, 1918.
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. W. Collins, 1918.
Amiel, Henri-Frédéric. Amiel’s Journal. Translator Ward, Mary Augusta, Brentano’s, 1928.
Ward, Mary Augusta. “An Appeal Against Female Suffrage”. Nineteenth Century, Vol.
25
, pp. 781-8.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Albert Sterner. Canadian Born. Smith, Elder, 1910.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Cousin Philip. W. Collins, 1919.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Fred Pegram. Daphne. Cassell, 1909.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Delia Blanchflower. McClelland, Goodchild, and Stewart, 1914.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Delia Blanchflower. Ward, Lock, 1915.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Diana Mallory. Smith, Elder, 1908.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Albert Sterner. Eleanor. Smith, Elder, 1900.
Ward, Mary Augusta. England’s Effort. Smith, Elder, 1916.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Albert Sterner. Fenwick’s Career. Smith, Elder, 1906.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Fields of Victory. Hutchinson, 1919.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Harvest. W. Collins, 1920.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Helbeck of Bannisdale. Smith, Elder, 1898.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Helbeck of Bannisdale. Editor Worthington, Brian, Penguin, 1983.
Watters, Tamie, and Mary Augusta Ward. “Introduction”. Marcella, Virago, 1984, p. vii - xvi.
Ward, Mary Augusta. “Introduction”. Robert Elsmere, edited by Rosemary Ashton, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. vii - xviii.
Ward, Mary Augusta. “Introduction and Notes”. Helbeck of Bannisdale, edited by Brian Worthington, Penguin, 1983, pp. 9 - 27, 391.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Lady Connie. Smith, Elder, 1916.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Albert Sterner. Lady Connie. Hearst’s International Library, 1916.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Arthur I. Keller. Lady Merton, Colonist. Musson Book Company, 1910.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Howard Chandler Christy. Lady Rose’s Daughter. Harper and Brothers, 1903.