Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer and philanthropist, remembered as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, as a practical philanthropist. Born in Bristol, she began writing plays, she became involved with the London literary elite as a leading Bluestocking member. Her plays and poetry became more evangelical and she joined a group campaigning against the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote several Cheap Repository Tracts on moral and political topics, for distribution to the literate poor. Meanwhile, she did increasing philanthropic work in the Mendip area, encouraged by William Wilberforce. Born in 1745 at Fishponds in the parish of Stapleton, near Bristol, Hannah More was the fourth of five daughters of Jacob More, a schoolmaster from Harleston, Norfolk, he was from a strong Presbyterian family in Norfolk, but had become a member of the Church of England, intended to pursue a career in the Church, but after the disappointment of losing a lawsuit over an estate he had hoped to inherit, he moved to Bristol, where he became an excise officer and was appointed to teach at the Fishponds free school.
They were a close family and the sisters were first educated by their father, learning Latin and mathematics: Hannah was taught by her elder sisters, through whom she learned French. Her conversational French was improved by spending time with French prisoners of war in Frenchay during the Seven Years' War, she was keen to learn, possessed a sharp intellect – she was assiduous in studying, according to family tradition, began writing at an early age. In 1758 Jacob established his own girls' boarding school at Trinity Street in Bristol for the elder sisters and Elizabeth to run, while he and his wife moved to Stony Hill in the city to open a school for boys. Hannah More became a pupil when she was twelve years old, taught at the school in her early adulthood. In 1767 More gave up her share in the school after becoming engaged to William Turner of Tyntesfield, Somerset, whom she had met when he began teaching her cousins. After six years the wedding had not taken place. Turner seemed reluctant to name a date and in 1773 the engagement was broken off.
It seems that as a consequence, More suffered a nervous breakdown and spent some time recuperating in Uphill, near Weston-super-Mare. As compensation, Hannah More was induced to accept a £200 annuity from Turner; this set her free for literary pursuits, in the winter of 1773–74 she went to London in the company of her sisters and Martha – the first of many such trips she made at yearly intervals. Some verses that she had written on David Garrick's version of King Lear led to an acquaintance with the celebrated actor and playwright. Hannah More's first literary efforts were pastoral plays, written while she was teaching at the school and suitable for young ladies to act, the first being written in 1762 under the title of The Search after Happiness. By the mid-1780s over 10,000 copies of this had been sold. Metastasio was one of her literary models, she used his opera'Attilio Regulo as a basis for The Inflexible Captive. In London, More attempted to associate herself with the literary elite, including Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke.
Johnson is quoted as saying to her, "Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth having." He would be quoted as calling her "the finest versifatrix in the English language". She became one of the prominent members of the Bluestocking group of women engaged in polite conversation and literary and intellectual pursuits, attending the salon of Elizabeth Montagu, where she met and became acquainted with Frances Boscawen, Elizabeth Carter, Elizabeth Vesey and Hester Chapone, some of whom were to become lifelong friends, she wrote a witty celebration of her friends and the circle to which they belonged, in her 1782 poem The Bas Bleu, or, published in 1784. Garrick wrote the prologue and epilogue for Hannah More's tragedy Percy, acted with success at Covent Garden in December 1777. Percy was revived in 1785 with Sarah Siddons at Drury Lane. A copy of Percy was found amongst Mozart's possessions in 1791. Another drama, The Fatal Falsehood, produced in 1779 after Garrick's death, was less successful, as a consequence, she never wrote for the stage again.
However a tragedy entitled "The Inflexible Captive" was published in 1818. In 1781 she first met Horace Walpole, man of letters and art historian, corresponded with him from that time. At Bristol she discovered the poet Ann Yearsley and, when Yearsley became destitute, raised a considerable sum of money for her benefit. Lactilia, as Yearsley was called, published Poems, on Several Occasions in 1785, earning about £600. More and Montagu held the profits in trust to protect them from Yearsley's husband. However, Ann Yearsley wished to receive the capital, made insinuations of stealing against More, forcing her to release the money; these literary and social failures caused More's withdrawal from London's intellectual circles. In the 1780s Hannah More became a friend of James Oglethorpe, who had long been concerned with slavery as a moral issue and, working with Granville Sharp in an early abolitionist capacity. More published Sacred Dramas in 1782 and it ran through nineteen editions; these and the poems Bas-Bleu and Florio mark her gradual transition to more serious views of life, which were expressed in prose, in her Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, An Estimate of
Robert McNab
Robert McNab was a New Zealand lawyer, farmer and politician of the Liberal Party. He was Minister of Justice for the 18 months before his death. McNab was born in 1864 at Dunragget farm near Invercargill, his parents were Alexander McNab, a runholder. His father represented the Murihiku electorate on the Otago Provincial Council, the Cambelltown electorate on the Southland Provincial Council, was for short periods on the Southland Executive Council and the council's Speaker. Robert McNab received his education from Invercargill District High School and the University of Otago, from where he graduated with a BA in 1893, an MA in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1885, LLB in 1891, he was admitted to the bar in 1889 and had a law practice in Invercargill from 1890 to 1896, followed by running the family farm on the upper Mataura River. He represented the Mataura electorate from 1893 to 1896. In 1898 Richardson was adjudged bankrupt. McNab won the subsequent by-election, held the seat again to 1908 when he was again defeated, by George James Anderson.
In 1914 he won the Hawkes Bay seat, which he held until he died in 1917. He was a Cabinet Minister, was Minister of Lands, Minister of Agriculture, from 1906 to 1908 in the Ward Ministry, he was Minister of Justice, Minister of Marine, Minister of Stamp Duties from 1915 to his death in 1917 in the Reform Government when Reform was in a temporary wartime coalition with the Liberals. McNab began researching New Zealand history in the late 1890s, published numerous articles and books including the Historical Records of New Zealand at the request of the government. In 1913 McNab donated his collection of 4,200 books on history and geography to the Dunedin Public Library, with the condition the collection be added to continually; as of 2008, the McNab New Zealand Collection contains around 83,000 items. McNab, who never married, died in Wellington on 3 February 1917, he was buried in Invercargill. Scholefield, Guy. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1949. Wellington: Govt. Printer. Wilson, James Oakley.
New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984. Wellington: V. R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103. Photo of Hon. Robert McNab, supporter of Prohibition Biography at Dunedin Public Libraries
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland; the urban area of Dunedin lies on the central-eastern coast of Otago, surrounding the head of Otago Harbour, the harbour and hills around Dunedin are the remnants of an extinct volcano. The city suburbs extend out into the surrounding valleys and hills, onto the isthmus of the Otago Peninsula, along the shores of the Otago Harbour and the Pacific Ocean. Dunedin was the largest New Zealand city by territorial land area until superseded by Auckland with the formation of the Auckland Council in November 2010. Archaeological evidence points to lengthy occupation of the area by Māori prior to the arrival of Europeans; the province and region of Otago takes its name from the Ngai Tahu village of Otakou at the mouth of the harbour, which became a whaling station in the 1830s. In 1848 a Scottish settlement was established by the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland.
Between 1855 and 1900 many thousands of Scots emigrated to the incorporated city. Dunedin became wealthy beginning in the 1860s. In the mid-1860s, between 1878 and 1881, it was New Zealand's largest urban area; the city population at 5 March 2013 was 120,246. While Tauranga, Napier-Hastings and Hamilton have eclipsed the city in size of population since the 1980s to make it only the seventh-largest urban area in New Zealand, Dunedin is still considered one of the four main cities of New Zealand for historic and geographic reasons. Dunedin has a diverse economy, which includes manufacturing and technology-based industries as well as education and tourism; the city's most important activity centres around tertiary education—Dunedin is home to the University of Otago, New Zealand's oldest university, the Otago Polytechnic. Students account for a large proportion of the population. In 2014 Dunedin was designated as a UNESCO City of Literature. Archaeological evidence shows the first human occupation of New Zealand occurred between 1250–1300 AD, with population concentrated along the southeast coast.
A camp site at Kaikai Beach, near Long Beach, has been dated from about that time. There are numerous archaic sites in what is now Dunedin, several of them large and permanently occupied in the 14th century; the population contracted but expanded again with the evolution of the Classic culture which saw the building of several pā, fortified settlements, notably Pukekura at, about 1650. There was a settlement in what is now central Dunedin occupied as late as about 1785 but abandoned by 1826. There were Maori settlements at Whareakeake, Purakaunui and Huriawa to the north, at Taieri Mouth and Otokia to the south, all inside the present boundaries of Dunedin. Māori tradition tells first of a people called Kahui Tipua living in the area Te Rapuwai, semi-legendary but considered to be historical; the next arrivals were Waitaha followed by Kāti Māmoe late in the 16th century and Kai Tahu who arrived in the mid-17th century. These migration waves have been represented as'invasions' in European accounts but modern scholarship has cast doubt on that.
They were migrations like those of the European which incidentally resulted in bloodshed. The sealer John Boultbee recorded in the 1820s that the'Kaika Otargo' were the oldest and largest in the south. Lieutenant James Cook stood off what is now the coast of Dunedin between 25 February 1770 and 5 March 1770, naming Cape Saunders and Saddle Hill, he reported penguins and seals in the vicinity, which led sealers to visit from the beginning of the 19th century. The early years of sealing saw a feud between sealers and local Māori from 1810 to 1823, the "Sealers' War" sparked by an incident on Otago Harbour, but William Tucker became the first European to settle in the area in 1815. Permanent European occupation dates from 1831, when the Weller brothers founded their whaling station at Otago, modern Otakou, on the Otago Harbour. Epidemics badly reduced the Māori population. By the late 1830s the Harbour had become an international whaling port. Wright & Richards started a whaling station at Karitane in 1837 and Johnny Jones established a farming settlement and a mission station, the South Island's first, at Waikouaiti in 1840.
The settlements at Karitane and Waikouaiti have endured making modern Dunedin one of the longest European settled territories in New Zealand. In 1844, the Deborah, captained by Thomas Wing and carrying his wife Lucy and a representative of the New Zealand Company, Frederick Tuckett, sailed south to determine the location of a planned Free Church settlement. After inspecting several areas around the eastern coast of the south island, Tuckett selected the site which would become known as Dunedin; the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland, through a company called the Otago Association, founded Dunedin at the head of Otago Harbour in 1848 as the principal town of its special settlement. The name Dunedin comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Charles Kettle the city's surveyor, instructed to emulate the ch
Ralph Hotere
Hone Papita Raukura "Ralph" Hotere was a New Zealand artist of Māori descent. He was born in Mitimiti, Northland and is regarded as one of New Zealand's most important artists. In 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Otago and in 2003 received an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. In the 2012 New Year Honours, Hotere was appointed to the Order of New Zealand for services to New Zealand. Hotere was born in Mitimiti, close to the Hokianga Harbour in the Northland Region, one of 15 children, he received his secondary education at Hato Petera College, where he studied from 1946 to 1949. After early art training at the Auckland Teachers' Training College under the tutelage of J. D. Charlton Edgar, he moved to Dunedin in 1952, where he studied at Dunedin School of Art, part of King Edward Technical College. During the 1950s, he worked as a schools art advisor for the Education Department in the Bay of Islands. In 1961 Hotere gained a New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship and travelled to England where he studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London.
During 1962–1964 he studied in France and travelled around Europe, during which time he witnessed the development of the Pop Art and Op Art movements. His travels took him, to the war cemetery in Italy where his brother was buried; this event, the politics of Europe during the 1960s, had a profound effect on Hotere’s work, notably in the Sangro and Polaris series of paintings. Hotere returned to New Zealand and exhibited in Dunedin in 1965, returned to the city in 1969 when he became the University of Otago's Frances Hodgkins Fellow. At about that time he began to introduce literary elements to his work, he worked with poets such as Hone Tuwhare and Bill Manhire to produce several strong paintings, produced other works for the New Zealand literary journal Landfall. Hotere worked in collaboration with other prominent artists, notably Bill Culbert. From the 1970s onward, Hotere was noted for his use of unusual tools and materials in creating his work, notably the use of power tools on corrugated iron and steel within the context of two-dimensional art.
From 1968, Hotere began the series of works with which he is best known, the Black Paintings. In these works, black is used exclusively. In some works, strips of colour are placed against stark black backgrounds in a style reminiscent of Barnett Newman. In other black paintings, stark simple crosses appear in the gloom, black on black. Though minimalist, the works, as with those of most good abstractionists, have a redolent poetry of their own; the simple markings speak of transcendence, of religion, or peace. The themes of the black paintings extended to works, notably the colossal Black Phoenix, constructed out of the burnt remains of a fishing boat; this major installation incorporates the prow of the boat flanked by burnt planks of wood. Other planks form a pathway leading the prow; each plank has had a strip laid bare to reveal the natural wood underneath beneath. Several of the boards are inscribed with a traditional Maori proverb, Ka hinga atu he tete-kura haramai he tete-kura. A slight change has been made in the wording of the proverb, replacing haramai to ara mai indicating the cleared pathway of bare wood in front of the boat's burnt prow.
The work measures 5m by 13m by 5.5m. Politics were entwined in the subject matter of Hotere's art from an early stage. Alongside the Black Paintings series, which continued until not long before his death. Hotere's political works continued; when Aramoana, a wetland near his Port Chalmers home, was proposed as the site for an aluminium smelter, Hotere was vocal in his opposition, produced the Aramoana series of paintings. He produced series protesting against a controversial rugby tour by New Zealand of apartheid-era South Africa in 1981, the sinking of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985. More his reactions to Middle-East politics resulted in works such as Jerusalem and This might be a double cross jack. Hotere's work was slowed by a stroke in 2001, but he continued to create and exhibit until his death in February 2013. A documentary film of the artist's life and work, was released by Paradise Films in 2001, in association with Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission.
Written and directed by Merata Mita, the documentary made its overseas debut at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Hotere was married three times, with two of his wives being artists, his second wife was artist and poet Cilla McQueen, whom he married in 1973, with whom he moved to Careys Bay near Port Chalmers in 1974. The two separated amicably during the 1990s. Hotere married Mary McFarlane, another notable artist, in February 2002. Hotere died on 24 February 2013, aged 81 and was survived by his daughter Andrea, three mokopuna and his third wife Mary, he was buried at Mitimiti. Hotere's former studio was on land at the tip of Observation Point, the large bluff overlooking the Port Chalmers container terminal; when the port's facilities were expanded, part of the bluff was removed, including the area of Hotere's studio. Part of the bluff close to the removed portion is now an award-winning sculpture garden, the Hotere Garden Oputae, organised in 2005 by Hotere and featuring works by both him and by other noted New Zealand modern sculptors.
Works at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: Works
Bookmobile
A bookmobile or mobile library is a vehicle designed for use as a library. Bookmobiles expand the reach of traditional libraries by transporting books to potential readers, providing library services to people in otherwise-underserved locations and/or circumstances. Bookmobile services and materials, may be customized for the populations served. In addition to motor vehicles, bookmobiles have been based on various means of conveyance, including bicycles and trains, as well as elephants, horses and donkeys. In the United States of America, The American School Library was a traveling frontier library published by Harper & Brothers; the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has the only complete original set of this series complete with its wooden carrying case. The British Workman reported in 1857 about a perambulating library operating in a circle of eight villages, in Cumbria. A Victorian merchant and philanthropist, George Moore, had created the project to "diffuse good literature among the rural population".
The Warrington Perambulating Library, set up in 1858, was another early British mobile library. This horse-drawn van was operated by the Warrington Mechanics' Institute, which aimed to increase the lending of its books to enthusiastic local patrons. One of the earliest mobile libraries in the United States was a mule-drawn wagon carrying wooden boxes of books, it was created in 1904 by the People's Free Library of Chester County, South Carolina, served the rural areas there. Another early mobile library service was developed by Mary Lemist Titcomb; as a librarian in Washington County, Titcomb was concerned that the library was not reaching all the people it could. The annual report for 1902 listed 23 "branches", each being a collection of 50 books in a case, placed in a store or post office throughout the county. Realizing that this did not reach the most rural residents, the Washington County Free Library began a "book wagon" in 1905, taking the library materials directly to people's homes in remote parts of the county.
With the rise of motorized transport in America, a pioneering librarian in 1920 named Sarah Byrd Askew began driving her specially outfitted Model T to provide library books to rural areas in New Jersey. The automobile remained rare, in Minneapolis, the Hennepin County Public Library operated a horse-drawn book wagon starting in 1922. Following the Great Depression in the United States, a WPA effort from 1935 to 1943 called the Pack Horse Library Project covered the remote coves and mountainsides of Kentucky and nearby Appalachia, bringing books and similar supplies on foot and on hoof to those who could not make the trip to a library on their own. Sometimes these "packhorse librarians" relied on a centralized contact to help them distribute the materials. At Fairfax County, county-wide bookmobile service was begun in 1940, in a truck loaned by the Works Progress Administration; the WPA support of the bookmobile ended in 1942. The "Library in Action" was a late-1960s bookmobile program in the Bronx, NY, run by interracial staff that brought books to teenagers of color in under-served neighborhoods.
Bookmobiles reached their height of popularity in the mid-twentieth century. Bookmobiles are still in use, operated by libraries, schools and other organizations. Although some feel the bookmobile is an outmoded service, giving reasons like high costs, advanced technology and ineffectiveness, others cite the ability of the bookmobile to be more cost-efficient than building more branch libraries would be and its high use among its patrons as support for its continuation. To meet the growing demand for "greener" bookmobiles that deliver outreach services to their patrons, some bookmobile manufacturers have introduced significant advances to reduce their carbon footprint, such as solar/battery solutions in lieu of traditional generators, all-electric and hybrid-electric chassis. Bookmobiles have taken on an updated form in the form of m libraries known as mobile libraries in which patrons are delivered content electronically The Internet Archive runs its own bookmobile to print out-of-copyright books on demand.
The project has spun off similar efforts elsewhere in the developing world. The Free Black Women's Library is a mobile library in Brooklyn. Founded by Ola Ronke Akinmowo in 2015, this bookmobile features books written by black women. Titles are available in exchange for other titles written by black female authors. National Bookmobile Day, sponsored by the American Library Association, is celebrated in April each year, on the Wednesday of National Library Week. In Kenya, the Camel Mobile Library Service is funded by the National Library Service of Kenya and by Book Aid International and it operates in Garissa and Wajir, near the border with Somalia; the service started with three camels in October 1996 and had 12 in 2006, delivering more than 7,000 books —in English and Swahili. Masha Hamilton used this service as a background for her 2007 novel The Camel Bookmobile. "Donkey Drawn Electro-Communication Library Carts" were being employed in Zimbabwe in 2002 as "a centre for electric and electronic communication: radio, fax, e-mail, Internet".
In Indonesia in 2015, Ridwan Sururi and his horse "Luna" started a mobile library called Kudapustaka. The goal is to improve access to books for villagers in a region that has more than 977,000 illiterate adults; the duo travel between villages in central Java with books balanced on Luna's back. Sururi visits schools three times a week. I
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, campaigned vigorously for children's rights and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour and keen observation of character and society.
His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense; the instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, he modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features, his plots were constructed, he wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age, his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are frequently adapted, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London.
His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for his realism, prose style, unique characterisations, social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, a vein of sentimentalism; the term Dickensian is used to describe something, reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island, the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens and John Dickens, his father was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majesty's Navy and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son.
In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, thence to Chatham, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11, his early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". Charles spent time outdoors, but read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, he reread The Arabian Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald. He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing, his father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school, at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham. This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House, the family moved to Camden Town in London.
The family had left Kent amidst mounting debts, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there. Charles 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Roylance was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop. On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music—he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings
Maria Jane Jewsbury
Maria Jane Jewsbury was an English writer and literary reviewer. Her principal works were Essays on Life and Literature. While bringing up her brothers and sisters, she read avidly, wrote for the Manchester Gazette in 1821, she devoted herself to family duties pursuing a course of literary compositions, while forming friendships with the principal authors. Her advice on theological and religious subjects tended towards dogmatism and a feeling of Christian right. Jewsbury's first book, Phantasmagoria; the book attracted the attention of William Wordsworth and Dorothy and she visited the Wordsworths in Lancashire. Another friend was Felicia Hemans, with whom she stayed in Wales in the summer of 1828, she was friendly with Barbara Hofland, Sara Coleridge, the Henry Roscoes, the Charles Wentworth Dilkes, the Samuel Carter Halls, the Henry Chorleys, Thomas De Quincey. Through acquaintance with Dilke, the editor of the Athenaeum, she began to write for it in 1830. Against the wishes of her father, she married Rev. William Kew Fletcher in 1832, at Penegoes, Montgomeryshire.
The couple set out on the long sea journey to India, where she continued to write poetry en route and a journal. The poetry was called The Oceanides. Maria Jane Jewsbury was born in Measham in 1800 in Derbyshire, now in Leicestershire, she was the daughter of Thomas Jewsbury, a cotton manufacturer and merchant, his wife Maria, née Smith. Her paternal grandfather, Thomas Jewsbury Sr, was a non-professional surveyor of roads, an engineer of canal navigation, a student of philosophy. Upon his death he left the family four cottages, a warehouse, a piece of land in Measham, a large sum of money. Jewsbury was the eldest of the children, her younger brother Thomas was born in 1802 Henry in 1803, Geraldine in 1812, Arthur in 1815, Frank in 1819. Jewsbury attended a school in Shenstone, Staffordshire kept by a Miss Adams, there passed through the routine of ordinary female instruction. Ill-health obliged her to leave school at the age of 14. Jewsbury's father worked as the master of a cotton factory. However, the War of 1812 with America hurt the cotton business and the family moved to George Street in Manchester in 1818, after her father's business failed.
Jewsbury's mother died one month after giving birth to the youngest of the children. 19, Jewsbury took on the mother's role for the household so that her father could keep working, continuing in the role for over twelve years after their mother's death. Although she developed literary ambitions at nine years of age, she did not begin to read systematically until she was twenty-one. In 1821, she commenced a course of reading combined with the composition of verse, her love of reading took the form of desultory enjoyment rather than that of consistent pursuit of knowledge. It appears to have been about this time that she addressed a letter to Wordsworth, whose poetry she admired, but to whom she was unknown keen for sympathy from someone with whose sentiments she sympathised; the application led to the establishment to correspondence, to personal and family intercourse, to steady friendship, but without any direct benefit for her as an author. Mr Aston, the editor of the Manchester Gazette, being acquainted with her father, had the honour of first printing and publishing a little poem of hers.
Watts, who married Priscilla "Zillah" Maden Wiffen, the sister of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen, the historian of the House of Russell, was less than two years older than Jewsbury, he aided her in the work of mental culture, gave publicity to her occasional poems, urged the composition of her first book and found a publisher for it. In 1825, Watts gave up the local newspaper, she wrote letters to her sister in 1828. In one of these Letters to the Young, she wrote about the dangers of fame to Geraldine, aspiring to be a writer, she warned her that fame would bring unhappiness and that the only true happiness to be found was in religion. These letters were written after Jewsbury had a spiritual crisis in 1826. In 1828 and 1829, he edited an annual, called The Poetical Album, or Register of Modern Fugitive Poetry, to which, to several other volumes of a similar kind, Jewsbury became a distinguished contributor; the Literary Magnet, The Literary Souvenir, The Amulet, were indebted for much of their popularity to her writings.
At a period, she wrote for The Athenaeum, many of the best pieces which she composed are found in that work. Mrs Owen of Rhyllon, in her Memoir of her sister, Mrs Hemans, wrote of Jewsbury's first trip in Wales: "She had long admired the writings of Mrs Hemans with all the enthusiasm which characterised her temperament. No better accommodati
