Mrs Humphry Ward Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian

Victorian novelist Mary Ward, best known to her contemporaries as Mrs. Humphry Ward, was one of the most successful and complex women of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into the powerful but patriarchal dynasty of Thomas Arnold of Rugby, she lived at the center of an intellectual and
cultural circle peopled by such eminent figures as Mark Pattison, Thomas Huxley, and Charles Darwin. Her novel Robert Elsmere (1888), the first in a series of bestsellers, earned her both unprecedented sums of money and the critical respect of such writers as Henry James. She helped found
Somerville College, Oxford, the University's first institution of higher education of women, and helped create a number of play centers for the children of London's working poor. And as the first woman reporter to enter the trenches in 1916, she wrote articles that were instrumental in bringing
America into the war.
In Mrs. Humphry Ward, John Sutherland explores a goldmine of materials never before available to recapture a fascinating life, one in which extraordinary achievements were often overshadowed by private misfortune. Sutherland describes how Ward's parents' marriage was shattered by her father's
religious peregrinations (an Anglican, he converted to Roman Catholicism, then returned to the Church of England, then became a Catholic again), how her own remarkable success placed considerable stress on her marriage, and how all her resources (both financial and emotional) went to support a
renegade, spendthrift, and disappointing son. And he also sheds light on one of the great paradoxes of this accomplished woman's life--that she led the fight to block woman's suffrage.
Throughout, Sutherland writes movingly of the private life of a remarkable public figure. A fascinating study of how much a woman could and could not do in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, this engaging biography illuminates the intellectual climate of the late 19th century.

Mary Ward (1851-1920) had a furiously active public career, her literary and philanthropic activities transforming her from an eminent Victorian into a pre-eminent Edwardian. The granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, she found herself at the centre of an intellectual and cultural coterie comprising the Arnold, Huxley, and Trevelyan families. Her novel, Robert Elsmere (1888), the first of a series of bestsellers, earned her both unprecedented sums of money and the critical respect of writers such as Henry James. She helped found Somerville College, Oxford, the University's first institution for the higher education of women, and inaugurated a number of play centres for the children of London's working women, despite being a fierce opponent of women's suffrage. As the first female reporter to visit the trenches in 1916, she was instrumental in bringing America into the war. Yet for all her achievements, her private life was overshadowed - often tragically so - by misfortune. Her parents's marriage was seriously affected by her father's religious doubts; she eclipsed her husband, a Times journalist and art critic, while her indolent son frittered away her financial and emotional resources. John Sutherland's fascinating study of the private suffering of this predominantly public person also provides useful insights into the restrictions placed upon women in the late-Victorian-Edwardian era. This title also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

List of illustrations; The girlhood of Mary Arnold: 1851-1860; Schooldays: 1860-1867; Oxford: 1867-1871; Stabs at fiction: 1867-1871; Marriage: 1870-1872; Marriage and Oxford: 1872-1878; Fighting back: 1878-1880; London: 1880-1886; The right book: 1883-1884; The Elsmere ordeal: 1884-1888; Elsmere mania: 1888; The fiction machine: 1890-1900; Families - the Arnolds: 1890-1900; Families - the Wards: 1890-1900; Homes: 1888-1900; Respectable genius: 1890-1900; Health: 1890-1900; The Passmore Edwards settlement: 1892-1900; Eleanor: 1900; Best-selling novelist, failed dramatist: 1901-1905; Family matters: 1900-1905; Mid-Edwardian: 1906; The Testing of Diana Mallory: 1907; The new world: 1908; Anti-suffragist: 1909; Arnold Ward, MP: 1910-1911; Calamities: 1912-1914; The Wards and war: 1914-1917; Soldier in skirts: 1916-1917; The end: 1918-1920; Notes; Chronology of Mary Ward; Select bibliography; Index

John Sutherland has taught at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He is the author of Victorian Novelists and Publishers (1976), Fiction and the Fiction Industry (1980) and The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (1989).