Anna Mary Howitt

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Standard Name: Howitt, Anna Mary
Birth Name: Anna Mary Howitt
Nickname: Annie
Married Name: Anna Mary Watts
Pseudonym: A. M.
Pseudonym: A. M. H. W.
Anna Mary Howitt was connected on the one hand with the social and publishing circles of her parents, the hard-working pillars of the London literary establishment, and on the other hand with a group of forward-looking, feminist women of her own age. She was most productive, both as writer and painter, during the 1850s. Her pictures included delicate landscapes and ambitious history paintings. Her written output runs the gamut through journalism, translation, letters, poetry, a travel book, children's stories, and memoirs.
Photograph of a sketch of Anna Mary Howitt by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poised as if caught in forward movement and as if listening intently to something. She is wearing a long pleated skirt, and a simple dark shirt with long sleeves. Her dark hair is pulled back.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith , Christina Rossetti , Elizabeth Siddal , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Anna Mary Howitt , and Mary Howitt conducted a series of seances at the Hermitage, the Howitt family home.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
97
Cultural formation Camilla Crosland
In 1854 CC began practising spiritualism, as her husband too did later. The couple, together with their medium, hosted a number of séances. In her autobiography CC recalls that Anna Mary Howitt was a very...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Howitt
MH 's first child to be delivered alive, her daughter Anna Mary , was born on 15 January 1824. She grew up to become a writer and artist.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London, 1992.
95
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Howitt
Their eldest daughter Anna Mary frequently visited her parents after they settled abroad. She was at her father's deathbed.
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Of her diverse network of friends, BLSB wrote to an aunt in 1857, I am one of the cracked people of the world, and I like to herd with the cracked such as A.M.H. [...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
BLSB 's other prominent women friends included Adelaide Procter , Anna Mary Howitt (Mary 's daughter), and Anna Brownell Jameson .
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
58, 71
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Siddal
ES had met some female associates of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood : artists Anna Mary Howitt (daughter of Mary Howitt ) and Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon), as well as Bessie Rayner Parkes .
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Siddal
While recovering from illness in HastingsES visited Barbara Leigh Smith and Anna Mary Howitt at Smith's nearby cottage, Scalands in Sussex.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. Manchester City Art Galleries, 1997.
103
Friends, Associates Christina Rossetti
Around this time she became aware of her brother Dante Gabriel 's involvement with Elizabeth Siddal , although she and Siddal met only in 1854 and were never intimate friends. Close family friends of Christina...
Friends, Associates Adelaide Procter
Other intimate feminist friends of AP 's adult years, in addition to Matilda Hays , were Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon . Procter was also a member of the Portfolio Society ...
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
Beginning in 1854, BRP and Barbara Leigh Smith participated in a society called the Portfolio Club in order to exhibit and share comment on their own and other women's artistic and literary creations. Other members...
Intertextuality and Influence Christina Rossetti
In From the Antique, a dramatic lyric composed on 28 June 1854,
Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., Louisiana State University Press, 1979–1990, 3 vols.
3: 449
CR 's speaker laments: It's a weary life, it is: she said:—
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish...
Occupation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith (later BLSB ) and Anna Mary Howitt were engrossed in painting and poetry.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
96
Occupation John Ruskin
Having begun to publish in the 1830s, when he became a champion of J. W. Turner against established styles of painting, JR made his name and created a sensation with the appearance of the first...
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...

Timeline

1854: Artists Anna Mary Howitt and Barbara Leigh...

Building item

1854

Artists Anna Mary Howitt and Barbara Leigh Smith were invited to join the Pre-Raphaelite Portfolio Club , a group which offered critical appraisals of members' work.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago, 1989.
41

December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...

National or international item

December 1855

Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
78-9
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 1989.
32-3
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby, 1995.
245-8

18 August 1882: The Married Women's Property Act gave women...

National or international item

18 August 1882

The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.
Holcombe, Lee. Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England. University of Toronto Press, 1983.
256
Soldon, Norbert. Women in British Trade Unions 1874-1976. Gill and Macmillan, 1978.
7
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
82
Hurwitz, Edith F., and Renate Bridenthal. “The International Sisterhood”. Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Claudia Koonz, Houghton Mifflin, 1977, pp. 325-4.
353
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
“Property Rights of Women”. What You Need to Know About Women’s History.
Blackstone, Sir William, and Edward Christian. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 15th ed., Vol.
4 vols.
, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1809.
Roberts, Marie Mulvey, and Tamae Mizuta, editors. The Wives: The Rights of Married Women. Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994, http://University of Waterloo - Porter.
Lacey, Candida Ann, editor. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group. Routledge, 1987.

5 January 1907: Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (who died...

Building item

5 January 1907

Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (who died of bronchitis on 30 December 1906) became the last person laid to rest at Westminster Abbey.
“Women’s History Timeline”. BBC: Radio 4: Woman’s Hour.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Texts

Howitt, Anna Mary. An Art-Student in Munich. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853, 2 vols.
Howitt, Anna Mary. An Art-Student in Munich. Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854.
Watts, Alaric, and Anna Mary Howitt. Aurora. King, 1875.
Howitt, Anna Mary et al. “Some Passages from the Child-life of Lucy Meridyth”. The Golden Casket, edited by Mary Howitt, James Hogg and Sons, 1861.
Howitt, Anna Mary. The Pioneers of the Spiritual Reformation. Psychological Press, 1883.
Howitt, Anna Mary. The School of Life. Ward and Lock, 1856.