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Mary, the writer
has a way with her words
she writes us a novel
or puts it in verse
..... MARY ANTIN - an American poet, who, whilst still a child wrote From Plotzk to Boston in Yiddish and then translated it into English for publication in 1899. She was 18 years old at the time
..... MARY HUNTER AUSTIN the American novelist (1868-1934) lived for many years in the desert where she studied the life of the Indians. She was a member of an artist colony at Cartmel and later moved to New Mexico where she taught and did further Studies of the Indians. Her first book was The Land of Little Rain (1903)
..... MARY BERRY - an English writer born in Yorkshire in 1763, was brought up by her grandmother until 1770 and then by a governess until 1775. In 1783, on a long European tour with her father she began her Journals which she kept for 70 years and which were published after her death in 1865. With her sister Agnes she lived in Teddington in a house bought by Horace Walpole and in 1791 moved into Little Strawberry Hill (Cliveden), later the home of the Astor family. When Walpole died she edited his works and after her father died in 1817 she became a professional writer
..... MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON - author of the famous and scandalous Lady Audley's Secret which was first published in the Sixpenny Magazine and then published separately in 1862. Lady Audley's Secret was a society novel which created an enormous sensation when published. It was her fourth book and was the first of its kind. Its publication appears as the literary event of the year in date charts of the Victorian era. Her other works include - The Infidel (1900) and The Rose of Life (1905)
..... MARY ELLMAN - born Mary Donoghue in 1921 in Massachusetts was the author of Thinking About Women - one of the first works of feminist literary criticism
..... MARY ANN EVANS .. 'George Eliot',author of The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861) and Adam Bede (1895). Born in 1819 in Warwickshire she began writing novels in 1858 but when her
companion George Henry Lewes died in 1878 she stopped writing and devoted her time to compiling his unfinished work. In 1880 she married John Walter Cross but died only nine months later on December 22nd
..... MARY LAMB born 1764 died 1841 author of The Tales of Shakespeare - a classic in English literature which was written by her but published under the name of her brother Charles Lamb. She also wrote an essay on needlework in which she argued that women should be paid for the work they do at home
..... MARY MACKAY - the English romantic novelist who used the pseudonym Marie Corelli. She wrote 28 best selling novels one of which - The Sorrows of Satan (1895) broke all previous sales records. Born in London in 1855 she was educated at a French convent and was a brilliant pianist. Her pseudonym was taken for a concert career but when her first novel was published in 1886 - the partly autobiographical " A Romance of Two Worlds" she became a professional writer although she hated criticism and refused to send her books to reviewers
..... MARY THERESE McCARTHY was an author who graduated from Vassar and became a drama critic. Sights and Spectacles (1956) was a collection of her reviews and articles from 1937-1956
..... the famous book and then film MARY POPPINS was written by Dr P L Travers OBE in March 1934. There were several books in the series and its magic appealed to people of all ages
..... MARY WOLLSTONECROFT SHELLEY was the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecroft and at the age of 16 became the second wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her most famous work was Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818) which was written at their villa at Lake Geneva when Lord Byron suggested that each of those present should write a ghost story
..... MARY SIDNEY - Countess of Pembroke, who was one of the most accomplished women of the 17th century and wrote and translated in various languages including psalms from Hebrew to English. Her epitaph by Ben Johnson reads -
Underneath this sable hearse
- Lies the subject of all verse
- Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother
- Death, ere thou hast slain another
- Fair and learned and good as she
- Time shall throw a dart at thee
..... MARY AUGUSTA WARD - better known as Mrs Humphrey Ward was the first President of the Anti-Suffrage League which published the Anti-Suffrage Review. Born in Tasmania in 1851 she was educated in private boarding schools in England and in 1872 married Thomas Humphrey Ward. Her first contribution to the Dictionary of Christian Biography was in 1877. In 1879 she became Secretary to Somerville College, Oxford. Altogether she wrote 25 novels, 3 plays and 9 non-fiction works and as a book reviewer was known to be a harsh critic of other women writers. In 1920 she was appointed as one of the first seven magistrates but died in the same year