Excerpt: ...don't like to go, Mr. Jones.' "'Nonsense, William! There is no harm in fishing, I am sure. I have often been out with your father myself.' "Much as I felt inclined to go, still I hesitated; for I could not fully make up my mind to disobey my father. At length he said,
Mary Howitt (12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English poet, and author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly.
She was born Mary Botham at Coleford, in Gloucestershire, the temporary residence of her parents, while her father, Samuel Botham, a prosperous Quaker of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, was looking after some mining property. Samuel had married his wife Ann in South Wales in 1796, when he was 38 and she was 32. They had four children Anna, Mary, Emma and Charles. Their Queen Anne house is now known as Howitt Place. Mary Botham was educated at home, read widely, and began writing verse at a very early age.
A good and well written story, ruined by the whinging, completely dislikeable main character, Edward Walsingham. By the halfway point I gave up, wanting only for someone to slap him across the back of the head and tell him to wake up to himself.