Mary Augusta Ward

Mary Augusta Ward, about 1890

Mary Augusta Ward (born June 11, 1851 in Hobart , Tasmania , † March 24, 1920 in London ) was a British writer, philanthropist and activist against women's suffrage. At the end of the 19th century she achieved great popularity with her novels, which she wrote under her family name Mrs. Humphry Ward . To posterity, Mary Augusta Ward is also known for her work for the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League and for her charitable work, especially for poor and disabled children in London.

Life

Youth and education

Mary Augusta Ward was born in 1851 as Mary Augusta Arnold, daughter of Thomas Arnold and Julia Sorell in Horbart, Australia . Mary Arnold came from a respected British family, the Arnolds, which produced, among others, Thomas Arnold , the English theologian, educator and head of the rugby school , and Matthew Arnold , poet and cultural critic. Thomas Arnold was Mary Ward's grandfather, Matthew Arnold her uncle.

Thomas Arnold, Mary's father, had emigrated to New Zealand and later Australia as a young man and, thanks to the good family connections, had already made it to the school inspector of Van Diemen's Land in Tasmania by the time his daughter was born. However, after he turned away from the Anglican Church and converted to Catholicism , his professional situation became difficult and Arnold also had a desire to return to the UK again with friends and family. The Arnolds traveled to England in 1856 in the hope of finding work for their father. The family then moved on to Dublin, where Tom Arnold accepted a position as professor of English literature at the Catholic University.

However, Mary stayed in England, where she spent some time with her grandmother and her relatives on the Fox How family estate, but was mainly housed in various boarding schools from 1858 to 1867. Her first (unpublished) novel, A Tale of Two Moors, was written during her school days . Mary suffered from the sometimes very bad conditions at the schools and from the separation from her family.

The schools Mary attended, while meeting the usual standards of education offered to girls in the 19th century, provided little education. To make matters worse, Mary Arnold attended school before the school reforms in England, which provided girls with at least a minimum standard of education, and about fifteen years before women were allowed to study at Oxford . Mary Arnold's younger sister Julia, already benefiting from the changes, attended Oxford High School for Girls and graduated from Somerville College with a degree in literature from Oxford University .

Move to Oxford and get married

In 1867 Mary Arnold's school days were finished. With the end of school, the separation from her family came to an end, because after another conversion of her father to the Anglican Church in Oxford, her family had moved to Oxford, where Thomas Arnold taught. Through contact with intellectual circles in Oxford, she received a variety of intellectual stimuli. Mary Arnold taught herself languages ​​by herself; her father also gave her music lessons. Thanks to her relationship with Mark Pattison , principal at Lincoln College , she was also admitted to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Mary Arnold met Humphry Ward, a graduate of Brasenose College , at Oxford , whom she married in 1872. The name she took on from her husband when she married ("Mrs. Humphry Ward") was later to be used as the author's name for her novels. Humphry Ward worked as a lecturer at Oxford University. The couple had three children in the following years: Dorothy (1874), Arnold (1876) and Janet (1879).

During her time at Oxford, Mary Ward was also committed to women's education , specifically women's access to study at Oxford University. These activities culminated in the founding of the Association for the Education of Women in 1877, of which Mary Ward served as executive director. The union succeeded in establishing Somerville Hall in 1879 , where some of Oxford's first female students could live and work. Mary Ward served on Somerville Council from 1881 to 1898.

In 1875, Mary Ward, like her husband, was given the opportunity to contribute to the Dictionary of Christian Biography . Mary provided some Spanish biographies for this ; she had previously acquired the expertise for this self-taught.

In 1881 Humphry Ward moved to London to work as a journalist with The Times . Mary Ward followed with the children a short time later.

Time as a novelist

After unsuccessful attempts as the author of a children's book ( Milly and Olly ) and as a translator, Mary Ward began to write a novel ( Miss Bretherton ) in 1883 , which was published by Macmillan in 1884 and was, however, little received by critics and audiences. Despite Miss Bretherton's failure , Mary Ward then managed to sign another contract for a book with Smith, Elder. Her next novel, Robert Elsmere , received rather mixed reviews but was a huge hit with audiences in the UK and the US. Between 1890 and 1900, Mary Ward wrote a large number of novels that, like Robert Elsmere, were great hits with audiences. She made around £ 45,000 writing during that time, making her one of the highest paid women in England. Mary Ward's popularity as a novelist had peaked by 1905, after which her income from novel sales declined. During the First World War Ward briefly had success again with the book Towards the Goal and the war novel Missing .

Mary Ward's huge income from writing enabled the Ward family to afford a lavish lifestyle, buying a house in the country and giving their son, Arnold, a college education. However, due to the decline in Mary Ward's income, Humphry Ward's speculation in art, tax claims and his son Arnold's gambling addiction, the family got into financial difficulties and had to sell a large part of their property in 1918–1920.

Mary Ward died in London on March 24, 1920.

Create

Literary work

Mary Ward has authored more than 30 books in her lifetime. Her first two books, the children's book Milly and Olly and the novel Miss Bretherton , were not very successful, but with the next attempt, Robert Elsmere , she finally achieved commercial success. Many of her novels dealt with religious questions and conflicts, thus following a trend of the time in the late 19th century: novels that dealt with religious skepticism, so-called novels of doubt , were a respected genre in the late 19th century authors such as George Gissing , Elizabeth Lynn Linton, and William Hale White also contributed. Even Robert Elsmere touches on this theme and depicts the religious doubts of the main character, the Anglican clergyman Robert Elsmere. Other topics that Mary Ward dealt with in her novels were current issues of the time: charity, social reform, conditions in urban slums and the decline of rural communities.

Mary Ward's most important and best major works include Robert Elsmere (1888), The History of David Grieve (1892), Marcella (1894), Helbeck of Bannisdale (1898), Eleanor (1900) and The Marriage of William Ashe (1905) called. It is noteworthy that Mary Ward, herself an emancipated woman who was active in public life and largely contributed to the family income with her job, did not allow the protagonists in her novels this independence, but rather portrayed them as subordinate to men.

Ward was a hugely commercially successful writer until about 1905, but interest in her books declined noticeably thereafter. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the topics her novels dealt with had lost their relevance and were perceived by the younger generation to be outdated. Furthermore, Ward's style, which was still very much attached to the novel conventions of the 19th century, looked old-fashioned with the advent of modernism. Since the 1990s, however, Mary Ward has been rediscovered by literary scholars as an important author of the late 19th century.

social commitment

Mary Ward is not only known as a writer, but also for her social commitment. So she used her relationships to raise support and funding for an institution that would provide relaxation and education for the London working class. This facility was named Passmore Edwards Settlement after its main sponsor, John Passmore Edwards. Originally intended primarily for adults, a care facility for children of working parents was also developed under its roof. In 1902 1200 children were cared for there. The Passmore Edwards Settlement initiated the beginning of systematic childcare, the administration of which was finally taken over by the London County Council in 1942. In addition to childcare, the Passmore Edwards Settlement also offered a school for handicapped children and was therefore also exemplary for other schools.

After Mary Ward's death, the facility was renamed Mary Ward Settlement in 1921. The Mary Ward Settlement is now home to the Mary Ward Adult Education Center, a continuing education facility, and the nearby Mary Ward Legal Center, which provides free legal advice.

Anti-Suffrage League

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the debate about women's suffrage was heated in Great Britain. Mary Ward sided with the opponents of women's suffrage. She also published several articles on the subject and traveled around the UK giving numerous lectures on the matter. A first article, an appeal against the establishment of women's suffrage, appeared in The Nineteenth Century in the June 1889 issue , and was signed by many prominent women from England's upper class.

In 1908, Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer and George Nathaniel Curzon asked Mary Ward to help them in their anti-women's suffrage activities. On June 12, 1908, Mary Ward's article, A Counter-Movement, appeared in The Times announcing the formation of a National Women's Anti-Suffrage Association . Mary Ward eventually chaired the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League , an association of women who opposed the right to vote for women and actively organized lectures and campaigns against it.

Mary Ward also took up the subject in her works, so Celia Blanchflower was received as an anti-suffragette novel. Ward's adherence to her position against women's suffrage was in part aggressively or satirically commented on by her opponents and increasingly viewed as old-fashioned and outdated. Her reputation as a novelist also suffered from this perception. Some literary critics today point out, however, that Ward's position was not as rigorous against women's suffrage and equality as her opponents at the time accused her of being: for example, Ward advocated communal voting rights for women, and after the First World War she admitted that society changed itself changed so that allowing women to vote in 1918 would no longer be as "dangerous" as it was in 1889.

Works

Novels (selection)

• Milly and Olly: Or, A Holiday among the Mountains . Macmillan, London 1881.
• Miss Bretherton . Macmillan, London 1884.
• Robert Elsemere . Smith, Elder, London 1888.
• The History of David Grieve . Smith, Elder, London 1892.
• Marcella . Smith, Elder, London 1894.
• Sir George Tressady . Smith, Elder, London 1896.
• Helbeck of Bannisdale . Smith, Elder, London 1898.
• Eleanor . Smith, Elder, London 1900.
• Lady Rose's Daughter . Smith, Elder, London 1903.
• The Marriage of William Ashe . Smith, Elder, London 1905.
• Diana Mallory . Smith, Elder, London 1905.
• The Coryston Family . Smith, Elder, London 1913.
• Delia Blanchflower . Ward, Lock, London 1915.
• Missing . Collins, London 1917.
• Harvest . Collins, London 1920.

Non-fiction books (selection)

• Towards the goal . Murray, London 1917.
• A Writer's Recollections . Collins, London 1918.

Article (selection)

• To Appeal Against Female Suffrage . In: The Nineteenth Century 25 (1889), pp. 781-788.
• A counter movement . In: The Times , June 12, 1908.
• Why I Do Not Believe in Woman Suffrage . In: Ladies' Home Journal 25 (1908), p. 15.
• Women's Anti-Suffrage Movement . In: Nineteenth Century and After 64 (1908), pp. 343-352.

Film adaptations of the works

• The Marriage of William Ashe , directed by Cecil Hepworth (UK, 1916)
• Missing , directed by James Young (1918)
• Lady Rose's Daughter , directed by Hugh Ford (1920)
• The Marriage of William Ashe , directed by Edward Sloman (1921)

literature

• Gisela Argyle: Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (Mrs. Humphry Ward) (1851-1920 ). In: Abigail Burnham Bloom (Ed.): Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers. A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook . Aldwych Press, London 2000, ISBN 0-86172-116-0 , pp. 396-399.
• Anne M. Bindslev: Mrs. Humphry Ward: A Study in Late-Victorian Feminine Consciousness and Creative Expression . Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm 1985.
• Enid Huws Jones: Mrs. Humphry Ward . Heinemann, London 1973.
• John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 .
• Beth Sutton-Ramspeck: Shot out of the canon: Mary Ward and the claims of conflicting feminism . In: Nicola Diane Thompson (Ed.): Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-64102-0 , pp. 204-22.

Web links

Commons : Mary Augusta Ward  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Mary Augusta Ward  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Mary Augusta Ward in the catalog of the German National Library
• Mary Ward Center

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Mary Ward - Somerville College Oxford. Retrieved November 11, 2018 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} P. A. Howell: Arnold, Thomas (1823-1900) . In: Australian Dictionary of Biography . National Center of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra ( edu.au [accessed November 11, 2018]).
3. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 17-29 .
4. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 29 .
5. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 34 .
6. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 56-59 .
7. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 71-73 .
8. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 97, 104-105, 130, 159, 361 .
9. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 368-371 .
10. ↑ Vera Nünning: The English novel of the 19th century . Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-939588-2 , pp. 128-129 .
11. ^ Gisela Argyle: Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (Mrs. Humphry Ward) (1851-1920) . In: Abigail Burnham Bloom (Ed.): Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook . Aldwych Press, London 2000, ISBN 0-86172-116-0 , pp. 397 .
12. ^ Gisela Argyle: Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (Mrs. Humphry Ward) (1851-1920) . In: Abigail Burnham Bloom (Ed.): Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook . Aldwych Press, London 2000, ISBN 0-86172-116-0 , pp. 398 .
13. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 224-225 .
14. ^ The Mary Ward Settlement. December 2, 2013, accessed November 11, 2018 . 
15. ^ An Appeal against Female Suffrage . In: The Nineteenth Century 25, 1889, pp. 781-788, accessed November 11, 2018.
16. ↑ John Sutherland: Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-818587-1 , pp. 299-309 .
17. ↑ Beth Sutton-Ramspeck: Mary Ward and the claims of conflicting feminism . In: Nicola Diane Thompson (Ed.): Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 204-222 .