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 descending Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Maude Royden
At Alderly, MR met novelist and anti-suffragist Mrs Humphry Ward , who attended Alderly Church and who admired Shaw. She was later to disagree publicly with Ward over the latter's anti-suffragism. Another friend, Constance Todd Coltman
Friends, Associates Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Maxwells had frequent house guests and entertained regularly at both their houses. Later friends and acquaintances included Robert Browning , Mary Cholmondeley , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , Ford Madox Ford , Thomas Hardy
Friends, Associates Freya Stark
Through her association with Jeyes, FS met such literary figures as H. G. Wells and W. B. Yeats . She also campaigned for the Anti-Suffrage League and met key figures in the group, including its...
Intertextuality and Influence Caroline Clive
Despite the universal opinion that the sequel was decidedly weaker than the original, it nevertheless did well enough to go into several editions. The Saturday Review noted that it was a book which, even if...
Intertextuality and Influence D. H. Lawrence
The Fox had been serialized in The Dial the previous year. Critic Esther Smith has argued that the germ of this novella came from Mary Augusta Ward 's posthumous novel Harvest, April 1920.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
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Literary responses Joanna Cannan
Favourable reviews of High Table tended to concentrate on its blend of qualities not often found together. The Spectator noted its combination of sympathy and insight with wit and a fine gift of phrase.The...
Literary responses Rebecca West
The wit and audacity with which RW attacked literary figures in her Freewoman articles—from Mary Augusta Ward 's complete lack of sense
West, Rebecca. The Young Rebecca. Editor Marcus, Jane, Macmillan with Virago, http://UofA.
15
to H. G. Wells 's spinsterish gossip
West, Rebecca. The Young Rebecca. Editor Marcus, Jane, Macmillan with Virago, http://UofA.
64
—helped her to make a name for herself quickly.
Literary responses Emily Lawless
In a long assessment for the New Review, Mary Augusta Ward also cited Loti, but pointed too at Spanish writers Fernan Caballero and Perez Galdos as exhibiting a similar care for landscape ....
Literary responses Sarah Grand
In an interview in 1895, SG distinguished between her personal beliefs and those professed by her characters: The views of Evadne or Angelica . . . are not necessarily to be accepted as my views...
Literary responses John Oliver Hobbes
Some early reviewers detected, despite the surface frivolity, a melancholic vein in her work:She wants you to mop your eyes, but your handkerchief should be of ample size, for while you weep she would...
Literary responses Emily Brontë
Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson published...
Literary responses Dora Marsden
The close friendship of these two was near its end. Letters on The Freewoman from Mary Augusta (Mrs Humphry) Ward and Agnes Maude Royden , a prominent member of the NUWSS , were printed in...
Literary Setting Sarah Macnaughtan
SM 's Canadian stories all feature the Canadian Pacific Railway in some context or other: it was still quite a novel enterprise during the time of her visit.
Mary Augusta Ward had recently published a...
Occupation Susan Tweedsmuir
ST began her career (her own term) in welfare work under the ægis of Mrs. Humphry Ward .
Tweedsmuir, Susan. The Lilac and the Rose. G. Duckworth.
87
She began by serving food to crippled children at the Passmore Edwards Settlement (later the Mary...
Occupation Henri-Frédéric Amiel
He became a philosopher and a professor of aesthetics, and published a number of books including a study of Germaine de Staël . His best known work, however, was his diary. It exerted an influence...

Timeline

November-December 1906: Mediation in the Book WarRSC: link to other...

Writing climate item

November-December 1906

Mediation in the Book War (of the Times Book Club against the Net Book Agreement) was attempted unsuccessfully by an unofficial committee composed of several eminent authors.

21 July 1908: The Women's National Anti-Suffrage League...

National or international item

21 July 1908

December 1908: The Anti-Suffrage Review began monthly publication...

Building item

December 1908

The Anti-Suffrage Review began monthly publication in London.

6 May 1913: The House of Commons defeated a private member's...

National or international item

6 May 1913

The House of Commons defeated a private member's Representation of the People Bill which would have enfranchised women over twenty-five who were either householders or wives of householders.

2 September 1914: The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly...

Writing climate item

2 September 1914

The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly formed along the lines of a similar body in Germany) summoned twenty-five writers to discuss the production of texts that would boost national feeling and the war effort.

June 1966: Anthropologist Mary Douglas published her...

Women writers item

June 1966

AnthropologistMary Douglas published her best-known work, Purity and Danger, a study of ritual behaviour and taboo.

Texts

Ward, Mary Augusta. Marcella. Smith, Elder, 1894.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Marcella. John Murray, 1911.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Tamie Watters. Marcella. Virago, 1984.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Marcella. Editors Sutton-Ramspeck, Beth and Nicole B. Meller, Broadview, 2002.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Fred Pegram. Marriage à la Mode. A. L. Burt, 1909.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Miss Bretherton. Macmillan, 1884.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Miss Bretherton. Macmillan, 1889.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Miss Bretherton. John Murray, 1911.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Robert Elsmere. Smith, Elder, 1888.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Robert Elsmere. John Murray, 1911.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Robert Elsmere. Editor Ashton, Rosemary, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Sir George Tressady. Smith, Elder, 1896.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Sir George Tressady. John Murray, 1911.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Case for the Factory Acts. Editor Webb, Beatrice, G. Richards, 1901.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Case of Richard Meynell. Smith Elder, 1911.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The History of David Grieve. Smith, Elder, 1892.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The History of David Grieve. Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1913.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Albert Sterner. The Marriage of William Ashe. Smith, Elder, 1905.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Mating of Lydia. Smith, Elder, 1913.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Story of Bessie Costrell. Smith, Elder, 1895.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The War and Elizabeth. W. Collins Sons, 1918.
Ward, Mary Augusta. The Writings of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Smith, Elder, 1912.
Ward, Mary Augusta, and Theodore Roosevelt. Towards the Goal. John Murray, 1917.
Ward, Mary Augusta. Unbelief and Sin. Printed for the author, 1881.