Author profiles

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Florence Marryat

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FM , who published about eighty books during the later nineteenth century, was primarily a novelist (known for fiction that plays about the borders of the supernatural, in spiritualist and vampire novels) and also a...
Florence Marryat Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Florence Marryat. She is wearing a dark velvet dress with a square lace collar. Her hair is worn in a bun; earrings dangle from her ears, and a necklace is tied tightly around her neck with a black ribbon. She holds a fan against her chest. Her name appears below in capitals in the form "Miss Florence Marryatt".

Dora Marsden

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Following a notorious suffrage career, DM founded, edited, and wrote for the highly influential journals The Freewoman, The New Freewoman, and The Egoist. She then wrote several books on the intersections among...
Dora Marsden Black and white photograph of Dora Marsden, shown from the shoulders up, with her body turned away from the camera and her face turned to face the viewer. She is wearing a light high-necked dress, with a dark collar. Her hair is dark and pulled into a bun on either side of her head.

Kate Marsden

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A nurse and explorer, KM published a small but widely-circulated body of travel writing that at once documented her search for treatments for leprosy and served as tools for her to raise funds and awareness...
Kate Marsden Black and white photo of Kate Marsden, 1906, shown from the waist up, wearing a dark dress speckled with ornament, with her dark hair pulled up and topped by a white headdress and long veil pushed back. She holds a bouquet. Her name is written in a top corner: "Marsden, July 13. 1906."

Anne Marsh

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AM was highly esteemed in her day as a novelist (and author of tales which would today be called novellas or short stories) whose career spanned about twenty-five years of the mid-nineteenth century. It is...
Anne Marsh Black and white photograph of a painting of Anne Marsh by Samuel Stillman Osgood, February 1836, framed by an oval border. She is wearing a dark dress; one of her hands reaches to touch the scooped neckline with gauzy fabric underneath. Her sleeves have small ruffles; her dark hair is pulled into a bun with a few loose curls framing her face.

Catherine Marsh

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Catherine Marsh was always an avid writer since she was a small child, and first tried, unsuccessfully, to publish her writing (a romance) in the autumn of her twelfth year.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co., 1917.
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Her first successful publication,...
Catherine Marsh The second and third pages of a letter from Catherine Marsh to Miss Saunders. Marsh explains that she has a great "horror of unnecessary publicity," and never speaks in the presence of clergymen. She makes her only exception for "Evangelists", among whom on the last page she counts herself a humble member -- and among whom, presumably, were the young men she was soon to address. Hilda Londry Collection.

Ngaio Marsh

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NM , a New Zealander with strong ties to Britain, is known there and worldwide for her thirty-one detective novels issued between 1934 and 1982 (and occasionally published in the USA ahead of the British...
Ngaio Marsh Black and white photo of Ngaio Marsh, standing in a spotlight and tilted backwards. Her black dress and dark hair are dramatically lit, and her hand holding a cigarette is doubled by its shadow behind.

Emma Marshall

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EM 's output as a writer during the latter part of the nineteenth century amounted to almost two hundred volumes: a rate of production necessitated by the bank crash which lost her husband his job...

M. Marsin

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Active in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, MM was a bold and idiosyncratic writer and publisher of tracts: her main interest is religion (even theology), but this involves her also in politics and...

Una Marson

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UM was a pioneering Jamaican poet, dramatist, journalist, and broadcaster whose most prolific period was the 1930s, during which she divided her time between Kingston, Jamaica, and London, England. Her writing consistently reflects...
Una Marson Black-and-white photo of Una Marson broadcasting to British troops in the West Indies from a theatre in London.

Mary Martin

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MM produced during her short, mid-nineteenth-century career, two novels and a few pieces of journalism. Her novel Julia Howard conveys her love of Ireland and a powerfully rendered sense of dispossession and persecution resulting from...

Mrs Martin

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MM was a novelist of the revolutionary period, with reformist if not radical leanings, who consistently, intelligently tests and comments on the conventions of the genre. She is not primarily, as said in some reference...

Harriet Martineau

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HM began her career as a professional writer, which spanned more than four decades in the mid nineteenth century, with writing from a Unitarian perspective on religious matters. She made her name with her multi-volume...
Harriet Martineau Photograph of the painting of Harriet Martineau by Richard Evans, 1833-4. She is seated on a small settee upholstered in red, with red drapery behind. She has one hand outstretched to rest on papers which sit atop a table with patterned tablecloth. She is wearing a low-necked long dress in dark blue satin, with huge puff sleeves and a gauzy white collar with a pearl pin in the centre, and a very long fur stole. Her shiny dark hair is centre-parted and piled on top of her head. National Portrait Gallery.

Damaris Masham

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DM , philosophical controversialist of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, was also a memorable writer of familiar letters and witty poetry (both pastoral and satire).

Mary Masters

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MM was a self-taught poet, probably born at the end of the seventeenth century, who wrote from inclination and published because she needed the money. Her feminist opinions (expressed mainly in letters) are those current...
Mary Masters A photograph of four lines of a poem by Mary Masters, written in an early, unidentified hand, beginning: "Tis religion that can give / S[w]eetest pleasure while we Live . . . ."

Helen Mathers

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Helen Mathers won success at a young age in 1875 with her best-selling romance Comin' Thro' the Rye, a semi-autobiographical novel excoriating the destructive impact of Victorian patriarchal sexuality on domestic life. After the...
Helen Mathers, 1851 - 1920 Black and white oval photograph of Helen Mathers by Stanislaw Walery, 1893. She sits in a high backed carved chair, with her head resting on her hand. She is wearing a low cut light dress in a swirly pattern, with ruffles on the shoulders and dark decorations at the neckline. Her dark hair is arranged in a bun, and she wears a dark bracelet. Her married signature is reproduced under the photo: "yrs ever Helen Reeves."

Eliza Kirkham Mathews

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EKM published less than has been supposed. Only her children's books, two volumes of poems, and two novels (melodramatic but heartfelt, presenting actual, financial, as well as romance-type struggles) pose no problems of attribution. She...

Flora Macdonald Mayor

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FMM tried her hand at drama and short fiction but is chiefly remembered for her four novels, published between 1901 and 1929. Hailed as an incisive, perceptive reporter of contemporary women's lives during her lifetime...

Charlotte McCarthy

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CMC was a mid-eighteenth-century writer of common genres like poetry and romance in idiosyncratic forms. She voices strong and equally idiosyncratic social, political, and theological opinions. Her expressions of female friendship sound like love. She...