Menella Bute Smedley

14 November 1820 - 25 May 1877

Standard Name: Smedley, Menella Bute

Birth Name: Menella Bute Smedley

Pseudonym: S. M.

Pseudonym: M. S.

Pseudonym: One of the Authors of Child-World

Pseudonym: B.

Pseudonym: The Author of Twice Lost

MBS published or co-published around fifteen titles in various genres: stories, novels, poetry, and books for children, besides her contribution to parliamentary reports about pauper schools. Her poetry makes accomplished and at times innovative use of dramatic and lyric form in its treatment of historical and contemporary material. Her work is distinguished by its sensitive depictions of women's struggles for independent lives and effective action, its acute dissection of Victorian gender conventions, and its positive representations of feminism and unconventional femininity.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Education	Rudyard Kipling	Even during the years of the detested Southsea school RK was developing an appreciation for literature. He writes of being surprised when reading (something Mrs Holloway forced him to do under threat of punishment) turned...
Textual Features	Josephine Butler	The new magazine continued Kettledrum's current serial by Menella Bute Smedley , entitled Lucy Ferrars, and some pieces related to JB 's edited collection Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, published the same...
Textual Production	Mary Boyle	Sometime after 1864 MB worked together with Tennyson , Landor , and Wordsworth in a miscellany encouraged by Lord Northampton (brother of her friend Lady Marian Alford, and son of the remarkable poet Margaret, Lady Northampton

Timeline

4 October 1818

Frank Smedley , novelist, cousin and mentor of Menella Bute Smedley , was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.

January 1849-March 1850

Frank Smedley 's Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil was serialised, in monthly parts, in Sharpe's London Magazine.

Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.

Smedley, Frank. Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil. A. Hall, Virtue, and Co., 1850.

prelims

Texts

Smedley, Menella Bute. A Mere Story. 1865.

Smedley, Menella Bute. “A Very Woman”. Seven Tales by Seven Authors, edited by Frank Smedley, G. Hoby, 1849, pp. 20-35.

Smedley, Menella Bute, editor. Boarding-Out and Pauper Schools, Especially for Girls. Henry S. King, 1875.

Smedley, Menella Bute. “Hero Harold”. Good Words, Vol.

, pp. 160 - 51, 256.

Smedley, Menella Bute. Lays and Ballads from English History. E. Lumley, 1856.

Smedley, Menella Bute. Poems. Strahan, 1868.

Hart, Elizabeth Anna, and Menella Bute Smedley. Poems Written For a Child. Strahan, 1869.

Smedley, Menella Bute. The Maiden Aunt. D. Appleton, 1849.

Smedley, Menella Bute. The Maiden Aunt. 1849.

Smedley, Menella Bute. The Story of Queen Isabel, and Other Verses. Bell and Daldy, 1863.

Smedley, Menella Bute. The Use of Sunshine. G. Hoby, 1852.

Smedley, Menella Bute. Twice Lost. Virtue Brothers, 1863.

Smedley, Menella Bute. Two Dramatic Poems. Macmillan, 1874.