Mrs Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian

by John Sutherland

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.

Genres: Victorian, Nonfiction

442 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 1990

About the author

John Andrew Sutherland is an English academic, newspaper columnist and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book when I wrote my dissertation on what I thought would be the anti suffrage movement. I came across this woman though in one of the articles I read and was completely intrigued by her. My dissertation ending up being biographical focusing on her life. She was a woman who wanted education for women, wanted them to learn like men and has a legacy for setting up schools where women could learn 'male' subjects. On the other hand she stood against the women's vote and with the help of her husband's newspaper promoted the anti suffrage cause. She was also a novelist and is related to Aldous Huxley. Sutherland captures her beautifully, his writing is good and makes this more like a novel than a biography to be fair. If you don't know who she is then I would recommend reading this. There is very little information to be found on her and what there is Sutherland has united into one very good book.

[Lucienne Boyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sutherland’s biography is a readable but baffing biography of Mrs Mary Ward. It’s not exactly a hatchet job on his subject, but it didn’t leave me with the impression that he had a very high opinion of her, or even that he liked her all that much. The text is littered with snide asides, and for a biography about a writer, he hasn’t a good word to say for most of her books. For all that, Sutherland’s biography is a well-written and clear account of a fascinating woman, although it did leave me wondering at times why he had chosen her as his subject.

[Yooperprof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well modulated biography of a giant in late 19th early 20th century popular middlebrow fiction. It strikes an admirable balance between respectful admiration and bemused drollery. Sutherland can be as empathetic as George Eliot, as tart as Lytton Strachey. "Mrs. Humphry Ward" was both a peculiar Victorian and an entirely representative Edwardian. For much of her life, she was the most financially well-remunerated author in Britain, and she and her family lived in opulent Sargentian splendor. But the family's prosperity was hollow, and depended entirely on her transitory earning power. They really would have done much better to maintain a lower standard of living - and to employ a good financial advisor instead of a chauffeur.

There's rich irony here too. In her latter years, Mrs. Ward was one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-suffragist campaign, speaking and organizing and pleading against the cause of granting women the vote in national elections. She argued sincerely, it seems, that women were intellectually and physically inferior to men. Yet in her own house, there's no question that Mrs. Ward (with the eternal assistance of her devoted daughter Dorothy) was by far superior to the rather feckless and inept men in the family.

[Russell James · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography, telling not only of her but her family, her publishers and her books. Success and tragedy. All you'd want to know.