Mary Howitt and the Business of Poetry
Mary Howitt served as the principal poetry editor of Howitt's Journal from 1847 to 1848. This article focuses on her understanding and practice of publishing poetry, as well as her approach to the many poems published under her oversight. Approaching Howitt's editorship as a social practice that encompassed networking, standards of poetic quality, and the negotiation of gender roles, I also consider the range of poems in Howitt's Journal and explore their political orientation as indicators of Howitt's editorial preferences. To illuminate her day-to-day editorial decisions and oversight of individual poems, I also draw upon her unpublished editorial correspondence.
[I read] at times a modern volume—Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl, Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie—Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," 18441
Linda H. Peterson's superb chapter on Mary and Anna Mary Howitt in Becoming a Woman of Letters (2009) moved the Howitts' collaborative writing from the margins of Victorian studies to its center.2 In the chapter, Linda traces Mary Howitt's evolving model of collaborative writing from a "family business" to familial collaboration after the death of her young son Claude, a tragedy that exerted new emotional and professional pressures on her writing practices. In his work on Howitt's Journal, Brian Maidment interprets Mary Howitt's journalism as a form of progressive popular writing committed to social reform through the enlightenment of readers.3 I build upon Linda's and Brian's scholarship by turning to a related topic they did not explore: the "business" of poetry in Mary Howitt's early poetic career and her role as poetry editor of Howitt's Journal. Approaching Howitt's editorship as a social practice that encompassed networking, assessing poetic quality, and negotiating gender ideology, I also consider the range of poems in the journal and interpret the political orientation of these works as indicators of Howitt's editorial preferences.
By the time she began to co-edit Howitt's Journal, Howitt had established a considerable reputation as a poet, an achievement easy to overlook given her relative obscurity today.4 The recognition she earned is evident in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which positions Howitt amidst the canonical figures William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Browning in lines 161-64 (see my epigraph). With some justice, Howitt's biographer Amice Lee claims that "by the beginning [End Page 273] of the 1840s the Howitts were both established as well-known writers whose books and verses were read and quoted all over the country. They had, moreover, a large public in America, and in one American anthology Mary's poems outnumbered those of Keats."5 Thus, when "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" appeared in 1844, Howitt had already developed strategies for managing her poetic career.
A lesson she learned early was the importance of literary networks. In 1827, Felicia Hemans expressed appreciation of Howitt's poetry, presumably due to the 1826 annual Literary Souvenir, in which Hemans's "The Child and the Dove" was followed a few pages later by Howitt's "Surrey in Captivity" (referring to the poet-Earl, not the county).6 This recognition turned on Howitt's single-author signature in the Souvenir. In 1823, Mary and William Howitt co-authored The Forest Minstrel, and Other Poems without indicating who had authored which verses. The contents page of the Souvenir identified her as "Mrs. Mary Howitt, one of the Authors of the 'Forest Minstrel.'" This signature conferred a respectable marital status on her comparable to that of a "Mrs. Hemans," indicated her poetic abilities independent of her husband's, and provided a bibliographical reference for those who wished to read more of her work.7 When Mary and William Howitt traveled to Liverpool in 1827, they joined the circle of Felicia Hemans, William Chorley (who edited the Winter's Wreath annual), and Henry F. Chorley (the well-known journalist and music critic who remained a good friend throughout Howitt's life).8 Even before 1827, she had fathomed what literary networks could do and expressed wonderment that The Forest Minstrel had managed without this advantage: "Everything in the literary world is done by favour and connections. It is perfectly a miracle to me how our former volume, when we were unknown and without one influential person to interest himself or say a good work for it, got favourably noticed."9
By observing Hemans, moreover, she learned that a woman writer could use her own symbolic capital on behalf of others: "Mrs. Hemans, who has many literary friends, has used her influence for them, & they have been very successful in their own application to many first-rate authors."10 She did not forget this lesson in her future professional work and sought to help others in turn when she could, even when her options were limited.11 When an aspiring poet wrote to her in 1849, she did what she could by opening her own network to him and taking time to share advice that demonstrated a firm grasp of the publishing business:
If volumes of poetry paid anything to the author publishers would have no objection to publish them. But I never knew such volume in a young author that was not a dead loss. Even if you get[?] enough to pay for the printing you [End Page 274] would not get the proceeds from the publisher in less than 18 months. I am sorry to throw cold water on your delightful scheme, but the poet is always either in hot water or cold.
As to using my name to Chapman & Hall use it with all my heart. I have no doubt from what I have seen that yours will be a very promising volume.
The safest card to play in the case would be to publish it by subscription. In that case you get a certain extent of sale, and the whole retail price into your pocket and at once. Moreover, the Publisher cuts you off at once thirty-five per cent for commission and trade profits, and when the per cent first is paid for there remains little Cut.12
She was dispensing this advice at one of the most fraught periods of her life, after the failure of Howitt's Journal had forced her family into bankruptcy.13
But at first the prospects for Howitt's Journal were very bright. William Howitt appears to have taken the lead in most editorial matters, and his signature appeared under contributions far more often than hers. Still, Mary Howitt's poetic reputation, which conferred implicit authority upon her judgments, led to her assuming the role of principal poetry editor for Howitt's Journal, in which some seventy different poets appeared. No Howitt's Journal poets became canonical, in contrast to Elizabeth Gaskell, whose three Howitt's Journal short stories under the pseudonym Cotton Mather Mills have often been reprinted. Some verse contributors, to be sure, remain familiar to scholars of nineteenth-century poetry and periodicals, including R. H. Horne, Barry Cornwall, Eliza Lynn (later Linton), and William Allingham. The sheer number of poets the journal introduced to its 25,000–30,000 artisan and middle-class readers is impressive, as are the diverse political orientations, class positions, and geographic origins they represent (see appendix).14 One indicator of the kind of verse that would have appealed to her is the poetry she herself contributed to the journal.
Her poems are always rhymed but take a variety of forms: quatrains, quintains, and fourteeners, written as ballads, prayers, nature poems, social protest verse, and fairy tales ("Anien Rhaa: A Fairy Tale," in the Christmas 1847 issue). Her commitments to social reform, Christian duty, and the nurturance of children are constants. In some lyrics, as in the journal itself, social protest is first strongly articulated, then contained.15 Her first poem in Howitt's Journal was "Lyrics of Life, New Series. No. I—The Children" in the inaugural issue (January 2, 1847). Its second stanza initially seems headed in the direction of Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children": [End Page 275]
Eloquent the children's faces— Poverty's lean look, which saith,Save us! save us! woe surrounds us;Little knowledge sore confounds us: Life is but a lingering death!16
But rather than depicting children brutalized by brutal conditions or lodging sarcastic attacks on complicit clergymen, as in her contemporary's poem, Howitt presents victimized children who long for middle-class guidance:
We shall be what you will make us:— Make us wise, and make us good!Make us strong for time of trial;Teach us temperance, self-denial, Patience, kindness, fortitude!17
Other contributions are explicitly apolitical. Her nature lyric in volume 1 of Howitt's Journal, "Coming Spring" (March 20, 1847), is joyous and celebrates the poet's capacity for love: "The heart of every poet feels / More love than it can hold."18 Her ballad of cross-class romance, "A Happy Ballad of True Love" (October 2, 1847), could have turned on class politics, but instead it sympathetically portrays a wealthy farmer's son who ignores his father's class biases when the father is dead and wins his "highland maid."19 It is a matter of the heart rather than a call for social reform.
Howitt's social protest poetry sharpened in 1848, however, when the last volume of Howitt's Journal was unfolding against a backdrop of intensified Chartist and revolutionary ferment at home and on the Continent. As Becky Lewis comments, in the retrospect "Eighteen-Hundred-Forty-Seven" (January 1, 1848), Howitt "rails against the year . . . which 'has used us ill, / Has stripped us to the very bone'" and "asserts that 'he has been a cruel guest, / His gifts have been war, crime and debt. . . . And, as a parting boon, the Cholera-pest!'"20 Yet when the poet thinks of her children and the impact of pessimism on them, she contains her outrage and seeks "new thoughts and better." The poet ends by praying for God's blessing and expressing faith in the "untried future."21
Howitt's strongest protest poem is her last piece published in the journal, "The Benighted Angel" (January 22, 1848). In this poem, a young angel who has "lost her way" turns up on earth, homeless, impoverished, and alone, where she is denied succor and sympathy at churches, the doors of the rich, peeresses' carriages, and bishops' palaces (while bishops dine inside). Even passersby in the street accuse her of being "a young imposter" and invoke the law against beggars.22 The sole places of welcome are the [End Page 276] gin palaces that exploit the poor, so that the angel spends the night under the arches along the river (notorious as a last resort for fallen women), attacking London's hypocrisy in the penultimate stanza:
Thus dost thou charter death and sin; Thus of God's law art thou a scorner,And plantest Hell—by licensed Gin, To snare the poor at every corner!23
Howitt's diction in this conclusion is sure-footed and confident. If, on one hand, she picks up and recirculates "charter," thus invoking the People's Charter that was propelling social activism in England, on the other she speaks from the tradition of elevated social protest poetry. For she deliberately echoes William Blake's "London" in Songs of Experience (1794) ("I wander through each chartered street / Near where the chartered Thames does flow"), a lyric that indicts the systemic collusion of social, political, and religious institutions in generating want and injustice. The evocation of Christian teachings as a warrant for reform and radical change aligns "The Benighted Angel" with both Blake's poetry and Chartist verse.24
Several contributors to Howitt's Journal were themselves Chartists, including Thomas Cooper, Ernest Jones, and Goodwyn Barmby, a selfavowed Communist (though he recanted after the 1848 revolutions failed).25 A number of other contributing poets were workers, including an unidentified "Manchester Operative"; John Mitchell, the Paisley Shoemaker-Poet; and Henry Frank Lott, whom Brian Maidment identifies as a carpenter.26 John Mitchell's first contribution, "Labour's Ditty" (March 20, 1847), sounds a distinct Chartist note as the speaker laments the "prospect dreary" he sees all around him and protests the collusion between the state and clergy, who are well-fed themselves but charge sufferers to endure their hard lot:
Our clergy, pious souls! say we Should kiss the rod that smites us,And humbly bow to his decree Wha to sic fare invites us;And when our rulers we invoke, And tell them o' our state, sirs,They treat the matter as a joke, And han' us o'er to fate, sirs.27
Opening Howitt's Journal's pages to known Chartist leaders and workerpoets signaled sympathy with activist politics and an openness to radical ideas. Yet radicals and workers often contributed apolitical lyrics that might [End Page 277] elevate readers' thoughts but did not call on them to act. For example, John Mitchell's subsequent Howitt's Journal contributions mostly bear out his admission that "his greatest ambition was to be considered respectable among the minor poets of his country."28 In the revolutionary year 1848, Howitt's Journal published his "Lines Written on the Shores of the Frith [sic] of Clyde" (June 17, 1848), which culminated in pious nature worship rather than bold political statement: "I seek thy sounding shores, where the rapt soul / Borne on the breath of Nature's harmony / Bounds from the earth o'er passion's wild control."29 Ernest Jones's "Life" also leaves politics behind, ignoring fights for justice to dwell nostalgically on the home left long ago.30 Eliza Lynn, in "Spring Flowers" (June 5, 1847), Thomas Onwhyn, in "Summer Sonnets" (July 17, 1847), and William Allingham, in "An Autumn Evening" (October 23, 1847), share the lyric invocation of nature that also informs Howitt's "Coming Spring."31 Howitt's idealization of the poet in "Coming Spring" is echoed in "Sonnet" ("To Feel the Beautiful") (July 3, 1847), written by army officer Calder Campbell of the East India Company, and "'Judge Not'" (October 18, 1847), contributed by Mrs. Valentine Bartholomew, artist and poet.32
Rather than self-identified Chartists and workers, it was often lesserknown middle-class poets who sounded Howitt's Journal's more radical notes, balancing class uplift, via high thoughts and religious contemplation, with edgier lyrics. Samuel Langley gave Westminster as his byline, but the poem's source may indicate that he was Irish: "'Help us to Work.' / Written on reading a certain paragraph in the Limerick Reporter" (November 27, 1847). His lyric assails Irish landlords for preserving fields so that they can go fox-hunting rather than providing peasants with food:
"Help us to work! don't say us nay; The helpless dwellers on the sodCry to the Irish popinjay; "Help, help us, for the love of God!"
Cease! men of pauper seed and breed; Hush! woman, child, the wail of woe;With landlord hearts in vain you plead,— The squire's reply is "Tally Ho!"
Yes! e'en in famine-peopled ground, The scarlet coated folk are seen;And huntsman's horn is heard to sound, O'er that huge grave-yard, Skibbereen. [End Page 278]
And so those gentlemen by birth, Who in the temple bow the knee,Starve men that they may fox unearth— God! what a loathsome mockery!
The vilest I would not defame, But can they Christ regard a rushWho make God's image kick the beam, Weigh'd in the scale 'gainst reynard's brush?33
Langley's lexicon indicates a high level of education, but his attack on class privilege and his appeal to Christianity are also recurring features of Chartist verse.
Another middle-class poet who extended the journal's radical edge was Henry Sutton, a vegetarian "abstainer" and disciple of Emerson whose father was a Nottingham bookseller and proprietor of the Nottingham Review.34 Each of his poem's satiric octets (in essence, double ballad stanzas) opens with oppressive status quo assumptions and then effects a rhetorical reversal. "We Know Better" (May 27, 1848) begins by protesting the assumption that peasants or workers are not fit for education or critical thinking and then (like Langley's poem) moves on to protest the game laws. But Sutton ultimately articulates a more general philosophical radicalism when he repudiates both capital punishment and state-waged war:
You say, from this [Mosaic] law, the command Murderers to kill you fetch:—Well then;—when Jack Ketch hangs a man, Why don't you hang Jack Ketch?——"Kill not!" says God:—is then the state, To this, God's law, no debtor?—O, to be sure! it's right—quite right! —But, thank God, we know better!
You teach, God will avenge the blood The murderer's hand doth spill;And then you hire troops for war, And pay them, men to kill:—So then; you can forgive sin, and Crime's retribution fetter—?O, to be sure! it's right—quite right! —But, thank God, we know better! [End Page 279]
The poem ends with a summary prophecy—"The time will come, when poor men's need, / Rich men's self-will shall stop"—that brings matters back to the political movement at hand before giving one more turn of his refrain.35
Much more might be said about the poetry or individual poets in Howitt's Journal, and the journal is well worth revisiting by scholars of periodical poetry and nineteenth-century worker poetry.36 But the point about Howitt's editorial practices should be clear: just as Howitt herself contributed a range of poems that varied in form, tone, and political orientation, so she (and William Howitt) accepted a similar range from among verse submissions to Howitt's Journal. A content analysis of poetry in Howitt's Journal, however, reveals nothing about Howitt's day-to-day editorial work. The best source for understanding her decision-making and social relations with contributors lies in her editorial correspondence.
Mary Howitt's correspondence must have been massive, given the number of poets Howitt's Journal published. Very little survives, but her letters to contributor William Cox Bennett, who contributed nine poems to Howitt's Journal, nonetheless open a window onto her editorial practices. They reveal an editor who sincerely desired to promote social justice and expand opportunities for others. But they also demonstrate a woman adept in tact who could adapt feminine discourse to sustain harmonious sociability while swiftly adjudicating submissions and remaining staunch in her judgments as an editor and poet.
William Cox Bennett (1820–95) was a minor poet who published some ten volumes of poetry during his lifetime. According to Anne Lohrli, he habitually shot copies of his verses off to a wide range of successful authors, including Dickens, who published three of his poems in Household Words.37 Howitt, at the height of her reputation in the publishing world, 1847–48, was another recipient of his contributions. She turned him down on his first attempt at gaining admission to her journal, noting the pressure for space:
I do not see how at present we have much chance of using them—for indeed were our pages four times the number they would not contain half the quantity of excellent contributions both in prose & verse that are sent. It bewilders me to know what is to be done because many of them are accompanied as in your case by such kind letters so full of hopes & encouragement & such willingness to work in the good cause of humanity—that one is more unwilling to say we have no room.38
The letter is a revealing amalgam of journalistic idealism, vulnerability, and firmness, the last two traits often gendered as feminine and masculine, [End Page 280] respectively. Howitt reiterates her commitment to the "good cause of humanity" and wants to welcome those who share her commitment; she also demonstrates to her correspondent that she has carefully read what he has written. She tacitly seems to group Bennett's submission with other "excellent contributions" she has received but cannot place, thus softening the rejection with an implied compliment. More strategically still, she adopts a feminine rhetoric of powerlessness to imply that she has no choice in the matter and confesses to a state of vulnerability and confusion ("It bewilders me"). But her conventional feminine gesture enables her to stand firm—which she did. No poem by Bennett appeared in the journal until some four months later, in the April 24, 1847 issue.
On the eve of scheduled publication, Howitt wrote again to say that Bennett's next poem, originally scheduled for the May 1, 1847 number, would have to be delayed because a prose piece had run long. The letter also illuminates the Howitts' deliberate attempts to cluster an issue's features that drove home an underlying theme:
Your poem will not appear next week for this simple reason that Mr. Fox's lecture spun itself out longer than was expected. It was not received till the Journal was made up, having a certain space for it. It came, was longer than expectation & upset all our arrangements. We wanted your poem & a splendid paper by Klemper [?] bearing on Education to appear all in the same number—but Klemper like you must wait.39
Bennett's sixty-four-line poem "A Cry for National Education" took up a full column when it appeared in the May 8 issue of Howitt's Journal, so cutting his poem had opened up a generous amount of space for Fox's lecture.40
Although she was supportive of poetry in the journal as a whole, Howitt necessarily worked within strict space limits; any overrun would mean increased paper, printing, and mailing costs, endangering the journal's viability. For that reason, as she commented to Bennett later on, "little poems are so convenient," a sentiment echoed by Graham R. Tomson, another woman poet-editor, at century's end.41 This pressure also created tension between Howitt's idealism, friendship networks, and personal authorial interests. A mildly exasperated Howitt responded to yet more of Bennett's submissions in June 1847: "Your sonnets are lovely—I wish we had room for them—but we have yet one or two good poems of yours—& such a quantity of other peoples—I cannot think when we shall clear the way a little—I have withheld any thing of mine for months to make way for our friends—& every day brings in something fresh."42 This statement was of course also a strategic gesture for turning down Bennett once more, since she claimed to be treated no better than he in the face of page limits. [End Page 281]
She was also constrained by a desire to uphold her editorial aesthetic standards. As she wrote to an unnamed correspondent, "It is no want of appreciation of poetry that has made us give only a little—we wanted to give only that which was really good."43 Defining "good" versus mediocre poetry, of course, has always been a vexed process tied to shifting aesthetic standards, authorial symbolic capital, and class and gender ideology. Poetry, for example, was still largely considered a male domain that demanded higher intellectual powers than most women were thought to possess.44 What seemed shoddy technique could invite hasty judgments emerging from class or gender bias. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was often criticized in her own lifetime (and after) for her deliberate use of half rhymes.45 Margaret Morlier reminds us that "correct" technique or solecisims against it could signify a range of political meanings.46 Did impeccable correctness in grammar and rhyme signify membership in an elite or anxious conformity to rigid authority? Did "errors" register carelessness, bold experimentalism, or incomplete literacy?
As editor Howitt came down wholly on the side of "correctness," possibly from the mixed desire to validate her own poetic mastery, uphold Howitt's Journal's reputation, and model standards for aspiring authors. In the letter to an unidentified correspondent cited above, Howitt faced the awkward task of rejecting a sponsored submission from someone who had been kind to their mutual friend Spencer Hall.47 First expressing thanks and requesting permission to speak freely, Howitt acknowledged that "we are rather hard to please with regards to poetry."48 After comfortably slipping into corporate editorship to screen her unilateral judgment, she bluntly stated the point: "The [poem] has a grievous defect & one which makes it quite inadmissible & that is its defective mechanical construction as to rhyme—thus for instance—run to rhyme with flung . . . gone & along—this may seem very little but it really is a great deal in the construction of rhyme; & you must excuse my returning it."49
Her forcefulness in dealing with "errors" also surfaced when she edited a sonnet by Bennett that had been accepted for publication. She became more assertive with him as she grew into her editorial role. After rejecting two sonnets that he had sent her in June, she suggested an alternative venue for them: "These sonnets are very good—what do you think of sending them to the People's Newspaper—They have asked me for poetry. And I cannot give them when I publish nothing in our own Journal."50 She coupled her supportive advice with a firm suggestion that he alter a line: "'Leigh Hunt—with the mild gladness of the mind'. . . is not as good as it might be—& as the sonnet deserves."51 She offered no explanation, but Bennett duly accepted her suggestion, and the line in the sonnet, which he included in his 1850 Poems, reads, "Leigh Hunt; with the dear gladness of the sound."52 [End Page 282]
Whether she needed to fill a space or thought the July 24, 1847 issue was too bare of poetry (it includes only one other poem), Howitt wrote back to Bennett, "If you have not otherwise disposed of the sonnet to Miss Mitford will you send me a copy—I saw the sonnet to Leigh Hunt in the Atlas."53 Bennett sent not only the Mitford sonnet but also one addressed to Howitt herself. Despite his obvious attempt at flattery, Howitt remained firm about a grammatical defect she had spotted in the Mitford verse: "And now I am going to put your good temper to the test—but still I do not fear—There is a little faulty grammar in this sonnet—it is correctly—'yet not my chair forsaken' not forsook—I however would suggest to you one of the alterations I have given—You will instantly see the necessity for it now it is pointed out—One often falls into these little inadvertent errors—."54 Perhaps Bennett resisted, for Howitt announced on July 9, "I have retained my own suggested alteration of 'garden nook' because the line 'In the dim city all have met my look' does not seem as good as it should be, as the true expression would be 'met my eye'—but of course my alteration only refers to our Journal—when you reprint the Sonnet you will probably find something still better."55 She was right on both counts. The sonnet, which she placed on the first page of the issue after the cover illustration, perhaps as a courtesy to Bennett for accepting her editorial dictates, featured these final two lines: "All have I seen within my garden nook, / Thanks to the magic of thy breezy book."56 Bennett clearly capitulated reluctantly, however. For when he reprinted the sonnet in 1850, "forsook" returned: "All have I seen, ere I my chair forsook, / Thanks to the magic of thy breezy book."57
Besides the letters to Bennett, few other records of Howitt's editorial practices survive. And the journal itself was short lived. In the June 3, 1848 issue, William Howitt signed a full-page "Address to the Readers of Howitt's Journal" detailing the great losses he and his family had suffered and apportioning blame for what they now faced: "There is now no way out of the difficulties into which a desperate and most artful adventurer has plunged me, but to seek the protection of the Court of Bankruptcy."58 The cover of the journal's final issue on June 24, 1848, was a full-page engraving of Mary Howitt after the portrait by her friend Margaret Gillies (figure 1). The opening contribution was "Lines Addressed to Mary Howitt, June 8, 1848" by R. H. Horne, a lyric clearly written to offer her solace: "Never despond, oh, Spirit pure! / Good comes to all who hopefully endure / A painful lot."59 Given Howitt's modesty, this showcasing of her image and a lyric that brought her "painful lot" before readers was no doubt William Howitt's doing. But ending the publication of Howitt's Journal by enlarging her visibility was an apt tribute to her role as contributor and poetry editor. She never got another chance to co-edit a journal after she [End Page 283]
Portrait of Mary Howitt from the cover of the final issue of Howitt's Journal, June 24, 1848.
[End Page 284] and William were forced to start their careers anew following bankruptcy, nor would she again command the same stature as a gatekeeper or leader of social reform.
But her achievements were substantial. As poetry editor, she was an acute realist about the business side of poetry, managing the limited space for poetry and the dim prospects of making poetry pay even as she retained idealistic notions of poetry and what it could do toward supporting social reform. She had decided opinions about what counted as "good" poetry that today seem dated, but when it came to negotiating gender roles, she was ahead of her time. She moved adroitly between authority and nurturance and seems to have gained increasing confidence in her role with more experience. Jan Marsh nicely sums up what Howitt represented to Christina Rossetti and other younger women poets: "As well as offering a model of female achievement, Mary Howitt thus actively assisted the younger generation. . . . In manner Mrs. Howitt was eminently modest, but her achievements were considerable."60 [End Page 285]
Linda K. Hughes is Addie Levy Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She studies Victorian literature and culture, with special interests in transnationality, gender, women's studies, and historical media (poetry and print culture, periodicals, serial fiction). Her most recent books include The Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry (2010); A Feminist Reader: Feminist Thought from Sappho to Satrapi (4 vols., 2013), co-edited with Sharon M. Harris; and Teaching Transatlanticism: Resources for Teaching Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Print Culture, co-edited with Sarah R. Robbins (2015). She is the author of several articles on Victorian periodicals which have appeared in VPR.
Appendix. Poetry Contributors, Howitt's Journal, 1847–48
Superscript numerals identify the volumes in which an author's poems appeared when that author is first cited; for obvious reasons, anonymous contributors are left unidentified. I have also indicated with an asterisk those poets whose work is excerpted in Brian Maidment's The Poorhouse Fugitives, since his collection includes the work of operatives and radicals whose contributions diversified the poetry in Howitt's Journal. Some poems may be reprints rather than original publications.
Volume 1
Mary Howitt1, 2, 3
William Howitt1, 2, 3
R. H. Horne1, 3
Goodwyn Barmby1, 2, 3
Richard Howitt1, 2, 3
*Thomas Cooper1
Edward Youl1, 2, 3
Henry F. Chorley1
Alaric A. Watts1
J. B. Kington1
George S. Phillips1
"Manchester Operative"1
Francis Bennoch1
John Mitchell1, 2, 3
*Ebenezer Elliott1, 3
M. C. (poem to Frederick Douglass and one addressed to the women of America)1, 3
Mrs. Valentine Bartholomew1, 2
J. Bayard Taylor1, 2
W. C. Bennett1, 2, 3
Nicholas Thirning Moile1, 2
*William Thom1
J. S. (poem to William Lloyd Garrison)1
Peter Paul Palette1, 2
*Henry Frank Lott, an Operative Poet1, 2, 3
Henry Clapp1
W. G.1
Eliza Lynn (later Linton), identified as the "Author of Azeth the Egyptian" (novel of 1847)1 [End Page 286]
James Dickson1
C. B. Doggett1
Barry Cornwall1
Volume 2
William Howitt
Calder Campbell2, 3
Mary Howitt
Nicholas Thirning Moile
Dr. Bowring, MP (translation)2
John Hurrey2
A. Rankley2
Richard Howitt
Miss Pardoe2
Peter Paul Palette
W. C. Bennett
H. G. Adams2
John Calcot Horseley2
Edward Youl
Anne C. Lynch of New York2, 3
William Allingham2, 3
*Thomas Miller2
Jonathan Percy Douglas2
J. Bayard Taylor
L. Maria Child2
Rev. George Aspinall2
Mrs. Valentine Bartholomew
George Cooper2
*Ernest Jones2
Goodwyn Barmby
Thomas Watson2
J. A. Langford2, 3
John Mitchell, Poet-Shoemaker of Paisley
Elizabeth Hoy2
Thomas Harrison2, 3
J. B. Manson2, 3
*H. F. Lott
Samuel Langley2
William Kennedy2, 3
T. F. Marshall2 [End Page 287]
Volume 3
Mary Howitt
Richard Howitt
M. C.
Goodwyn Barmby
William Kennedy
Edward Youl
Anne C. Lynch (NY)
George Hume3
*Robert Story3
W. C. Bennett
D. Farish, a Village Teacher3
H. F. F.3
J. D.3
George Tweddell3
J. A. Langford
Thomas Harrison
J. B. Southwick3
Mrs. E. S. Craven Green3
Newton Goodrich3
*Ebenezer Elliott
E. W.3
William Howitt
Edward M. Collins3
Henry W. Longfellow3
James T. Fields (Boston)3
Cusco3
*Henry Frank Lott
Henry Sutton3
M. Heckmondwicke3
J. Bradshaw Walker3
J. B. Manson
William Allingham
Calder Campbell
John Mitchell
R. H. Horne
NOTES
. In addition to the debt I owe to Linda H. Peterson, I wish to thank Claire Landes, Addie Levy Research Fellow, 2016–17, for her excellent research on Howitt's Journal contributors, as well as her assistance with formatting and proofing. [End Page 288]
I would also like to thank Heidi Hakimi-Hood, Addie Levy Research Fellow, 2015–16, for compiling a bibliography of poems in Howitt's Journal that was essential to writing this essay. My research at the Nottinghamshire Archives was supported by a TCU Research and Creativity Grant in 2010. I gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from Mary Howitt's unpublished correspondence from Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives in Nottingham, UK, and Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
1. Barrett Browning, "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," lines 161–64, in Stone and Taylor, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 127.
2. Peterson, Becoming a Woman of Letters, 96–130. See also Peterson, Traditions of Victorian Women's Autobiography, 151–53, and Howitt, Autobiography.
3. Maidment, "Magazines of Popular Progress" and "Works in unbroken succession"; Peterson, Becoming a Woman of Letters, 97.
4. In Becoming a Woman of Letters, Peterson frankly acknowledges Howitt's failure to establish a lasting reputation (96). The sole well-known poem by Howitt today is "The Spider and the Fly," which was reprinted with illustrations by Tony DiTerlizzi in 2002 and won a Caldecott Medal.
6. Hemans, "Child and the Dove," 245–47; Howitt, "Surrey in Captivity," 252–55; Howitt, Autobiography 1:195. The Earl of Surrey was confined to his home at Windsor in 1537 and penned lyrics about his confinement (Brigden, "Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey," n.p.).
10. Mary Howitt to Miss Brooks, June 26, 1829, DD976/2, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives. My work at the Nottingham archive is partly owing to Linda and involves one of my pleasantest memories of her. In 2009, we both attended the Cambridge conference co-sponsored by the British and North American Victorian Studies Associations (BAVS/NAVSA) and were headed to the Tennyson Bicentenary Conference in Lincoln afterward. Linda proposed that she rent a car and drive us—in a stick shift auto with the driver's seat on the right side, no less—from Cambridge to Lincoln. She not only drove expertly but managed map-reading with aplomb, getting us to Belton House (a National Trust site) near Lincoln, where we had a lovely time touring this historic house, the burial site of sometime Pall Mall Gazette editor Henry Cust. We still arrived in Lincoln in time to check into housing and get to an afternoon tour of Tennyson-related photographs and books led by Jim Cheshire, University of Lincoln. On the way, we talked about Mary Howitt, since by then I had become interested in her, and Linda shared her experiences at the two major Howitt archives in Nottingham. When I opened my Howitt folder to begin writing this essay, there at the [End Page 289] top was a photocopy of a handwritten list of letters from Howitt to the Rev. Henry Sutton and others with a sticky note attached from Linda pointing out that "some background" in the photocopy was from a "source now unknown." It was utterly like Linda that she shared helpful details from her own private materials and filled in bibliographical information from her immense store of knowledge.
11. Her generosity backfired in a notorious instance when Edward Youl, who contributed poems to all three volumes of Howitt's Journal, forged her name in begging letters to Macaulay and Sir Robert Peel, among others. Howitt mentions this exploitation of her name in the Autobiography (2:51–55). See also Hack, Material Interests, 106–7.
12. Mary Howitt to an unidentified correspondent, October 18, 1849, M155/1, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
14. North's entry on Howitt's Journal in the Waterloo Directory provides my circulation figures.
15. In "Magazines of Popular Progress," Maidment notes that "such magazines were rooted in the traditions of philosophical radicalism, but they were not overtly political in focus, mode, or party affiliation" (83).
17. Ibid., lines 26–30. The poem's title is another skillful allusion to additional poetry by Howitt. In 1847, she published Ballads and Other Poems, her most popular volume, which included five "Lyrics of Life" (278–94).
23. Ibid., lines 105–8.
24. Blake, "London," 73, lines 1–2. I find a more direct echo of Blake in Howitt's poem than does Lewis, who sees only a "reminiscence" of him ("Mary Howitt," 178).
31. [Lynn], "Spring Flowers," 316; [Onwhyn] ("Peter Paul Palette"), "Summer Sonnets," 78; Allingham, "Autumn Evening," 267. For illustrator Thomas Onwhyn's pseudonym, see North, Domestication of Genius, 160n63. [End Page 290]
32. Campbell, "Sonnet," 8; Bartholomew, "Judge Not," 242. For details on Campbell, see Chichester and Lunt, "Robert Calder Campbell," n.p.; for Bartholomew, see Clarke, "Anne Charlotte Bartholomew," n.p. A letter from Howitt to Bartholomew in the Howitt Collection praises Bartholomew for lines received, perhaps in reference to "Judge Not." July 9 (year unknown), MsL H8635, University of Iowa Libraries. Howitt's note addressed from Clapton was clearly written during her editorship since she comments on how the journal is doing and reports on the financial losses caused by a fire that had destroyed all the stored half-year volumes of the journal and by one of their biggest agents, who had not paid them, having gone out of business (presumably bankrupted).
33. Langley, "Help Us to Work," 350, lines 1–20. "Skibbereen" in line 12 references a notorious site of the Irish famine. As Kinealy states, "Skibbereen came to represent the plight of the Irish destitute in the winter of 1846–47. . . . At the beginning of 1847, the local Church of Ireland minister estimated that mortality in the union had reached 10,000 out of a population of 100,000." Yet even as the scale of death necessitated a mass grave, some landlords were evicting tenants who had not paid their rents. See Kinealy, Death-Dealing Famine, 94–95.
34. For Sutton's details, see Owen and Basu, "Henry Septimus Sutton," n.p.
36. Google Books has digitized all three volumes of the journal, making them widely accessible.
38. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, January 15, 1847, M1009, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
39. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, April 23, 1847, M1010, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives. "Report of a Lecture by W. J. Fox: On the Duties and Rights of Society as to Education" was published in the May 1, 1847 issue of Howitt's Journal (241–45).
41. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, August 26, 1847, M1015, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives. Graham R. Tomson, who edited Sylvia's Journal, asserted in an Academy review that verse "was simply invaluable for 'lightening up' the pages of periodicals." See Tomson, review of Poems, 302.
42. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, June 7, 1847, M1011, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
43. Undated letter from Mary Howitt to an unidentified correspondent, Howitt Collection, MsL H8635, University of Iowa Libraries.
46. Morlier, "Sonnets from the Portuguese," 97, 101–2. My thanks to Marjorie Stone for pointing out Morlier's article. [End Page 291]
47. The Howitts knew Hall from their Nottingham days. In addition to being a writer, he was also the mesmerist credited with "curing" Harriet Martineau. Goodwin and Barczewski, "Spencer Timothy Hall," n.p.
48. Undated letter from Mary Howitt to an unidentified correspondent, Howitt Collection, MsL H8635, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries.
49. Undated letter from Mary Howitt to unidentified correspondent, Howitt Collection, MsL H8635, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries. Howitt spent the rest of her letter explaining how painful this rejection was to her.
50. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, June 7, 1847, M1011, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
51. Ibid.
53. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, July 4, 1847, M1012, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
54. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, postmarked July 7, 1847, M1013, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
55. Mary Howitt to W. C. Bennett, July 9, 1847, M1014, Inspire Nottinghamshire Archives.
58. William Howitt, "Address," 365.
