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Mary ward centre

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Mary Ward
by
Diana Powell
  • LAST REVIEWED: 02 March 2011
  • LAST MODIFIED: 02 March 2011
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199799558-0072

  • Bindslev, Anne M. “Mrs. Humphry Ward: A Study in Late-Victorian Feminine Consciousness and Creative Expression.” Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985.

    This PhD dissertation (University of Stockholm, 1985) considers Ward’s views on marriage, professional work, politics, and education from a feminist perspective.

  • Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. “Mary Augusta Ward.” Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present.

    A great starting place for research on Ward. Contains historical, cultural, biographical, and bibliographical information on Ward and her writing. Allows for topical or literary searches and for the building of timelines based on a searcher’s interests. Available by subscription.

  • Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1972.

    A foundational feminist text that

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    ary Augusta Ward, née Arnold (1851-1920), is better known as the late Victorian novelist Mrs Humphry Ward. The eldest granddaughter of Dr Arnold of Rugby, she was born into the intellectual éite: her father Thomas would become an Oxford don; her uncle Matthew, the poet and literary and cultural critic, would become Professor of Poetry at Oxford; her sister Julia would marry into the Huxley clan. In her own time, under her formal married name, she would be as famous as any of these, probably more so: "It is impossible to estimate the number of people who have read Mrs. Ward's books," wrote a contemporary biographer, "and it is equally impossible to find an English man or woman, of fair education, who has never read any of them. There is therefore no need for wonderment at the enormous influence they have exerted, it is the natural outcome of an immense success" (Walters 202). As was the case with some of her contemporaries, Ward's reputation declined dramatically with the passing of the late Victorian era, but her novels are still fascinating for the light they thr

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    Mrs Humphry Ward (1851-1920)

    Mary Augusta Ward (née Arnold) was born in Hobart, Tasmania into a veritable Victorian dynasty:  the Arnolds.  Her grandfather was the infamous Dr Thomas Arnold of Rugby and her uncle was Matthew Arnold, affectionately known as Uncle Matt.  Dr Arnold had an astonishingly strong work ethic, much parodied by Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians, and this both inspired and alarmed his family.  Although he rather undermined his own teachings by dying at the age of just 47, he continued to exert a powerful influence over the other Arnolds.

    As is often the case, his strength of character was not inherited by his eldest son, Tom (Mary’s father), who was permanent state of vacillation.  His conversion to Catholicism scuppered his chances of a plum job in Australia, and the family were forced to move to England.  His outraged wife vented her frustration by hurling a brick through the window of the local Catholic cathedral.  Although Tom finally landed a job in Oxford and set up home there, Mary was banished to boarding school for eight years, while her sib

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