Mary Augusta Ward

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Image:MaryAugustaWard.jpg Image:Huxley-Arnold family tree.pngMary Augusta Ward (née Arnold; June 11 1851 – March 26, 1920), was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs. Humphry Ward.

1 Biography
2 Foundations, Organisations and Settlements
3 Associated Activists in Social Change
4 Bibliography
5 External links

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Biography

Mary Augusta Arnold was born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1851. She was the daughter of Tom Arnold, a professor of literature, and Julia Sorrell. Her uncle was the poet Matthew Arnold and her grandfather had been Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby School. Her sister, also called Julia, married Leonard Huxley, the son of Thomas Huxley and their sons were Julian and Aldous Huxley. As a young woman, Mary married Humphry "Thomas" Ward, a writer and editor.

Mary Augusta Ward began her career writing articles for magazines while working on a book for children that was published in 1881 under the title Milly and Olly. Her novels contained strong religious subject matter relevant to Victorian values she herself practised. Her popularity spread beyond Great Britain to the United States. According to the New York Times, her book Lady Rose's Daughter was the bestselling novel in the United States in 1903 as was The Marriage of William Ashe in 1905. Her most popular novel by far was the religious "novel with a purpose" Robert Elsmere.

Mrs. Ward helped establish an organization for working and teaching among the poor and was one of the founders of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908. In this latter vein, some of her writings were under the name "Mrs. Humphry Ward". But she also had an enduring impact on public education in England, through the pioneering work of the residential settlements she founded. Mary Ward's declared aim was 'equalisation' in society, and she established educational settlements first at Marchmont Hall and later at Tavistock Place in Bloomsbury, London. This was originally called the Passmore Edwards Settlement, after its benefactor John Passmore Edwards, but after her death became the Mary Ward Settlement. The settlement had a rich social and educational fare of clubs, concerts, debates and lectures that reached the lives of ordinary people. The building was crammed full of local residents enjoying "the hundred pleasures and opportunities that mainly fall to the rich". The Mary Ward Centre continues as an adult education college and is still, in Mary Ward's words "a place for ideals, a place for enthusiasm".

In the summer of 1908 she was asked by George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston and William Cremer to become the first president of Britain’s Anti-Suffrage League. Ward agreed and took on the job creating editing the Anti-Suffrage Review. Using her writing skills she published a large number of articles on the subject and two of her novels, The Testing of Diana Mallory and Delia Blanchflower, were used as platforms to criticize the suffragettes. In a 1909 article in The Times, Ward wrote that constitutional, legal, financial, military, and international problems were problems only men could solve. However, she came to promote the idea of women having a voice in local government and other rights that the men's anti-suffrage movement would not tolerate.

During World War I, she was asked by Theodore Roosevelt to write a series of articles to explain to Americans what was happening in Britain during the war.

Mary Augusta Ward died in London, England, and was interred at Aldbury in Hertfordshire.

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