Howitt, WILLIAM and MARY, whose writings charmed, interested, and instructed the public during the earlier half of the 19th century, may best be treated together. William Howitt, the son of a land-surveyor of good descent, a member of the Society of Friends, was born at Heanor, Derbyshire, in 1792, and was educated at Ackworth and Tamworth. With no intention of pursuing the business, he served a four years' apprenticeship to a builder, carpenter, and cabinet-maker. Possessed of strong literary tastes, and fond of country life and sports, he wrote poems, and an account of a country excursion after the manner of
Washington Irving. On April 16, 1821, William Howitt married Mary Botham, a young lady of kindred tastes (born at Uttoxeter, 12th March 1799), and they settled at Hanley, to conduct a chemist's business. After a few months they removed to Nottingham for twelve years of steady and successful literary industry and mental improvement. Their later places of abode were Esher, in Surrey, London, Heidelberg, and Rome. The record of their after-life is a record of the books they wrote, of pleasant travel for literary purposes, while they were on terms of easy intercourse with all their notable contemporaries. In 1852-54, at the height of the gold-fever, William Howitt was in Australia. The Howitts were instrumental in getting £1000 for Miss Meteyard's life of Wedgwood, and it was at William Howitt's suggestion that Mrs Gaskell wrote her first novel. They quitted the Society of Friends in 1847; William Howitt became a believer in spiritualism, and in May 1882 Mary Howitt joined the Catholic communion. After a long life of blameless literary industry William Howitt died at Rome, March 3, 1879. Mary Howitt, whose heart and mind 'ever flowed with love and interest for all her surroundings,' composed and wrote from her earliest years, and most people have seen or read some of her poems, ballads, novels, or juvenile tales, of which she wrote many. By means of translations she first made the works of F. Bremer and Hans Andersen known to the English public. She wrote for the annuals, for the People's Journal, Howitt's Journal, Chambers's Journal, &c. A pension was bestowed upon her in 1879 by Lord Beaconsfield. She died at Rome, January 30, 1888, and her remains were laid beside those of her husband in the cemetery of Monte Testaccio. One critic has justly said that W. Howitt and his wife are inseparably associated with all that is enchanting in rural England. In their poems, their novels, and the stories of their country rambles they made themselves the exponents of nature, blending the idealism of poetic fancies with pictures that have the realism of photographs. In politics William Howitt was an extreme Radical. Joint productions of William and Mary Howitt were the Forest Minstrel (1827), Desolation of Eyam (1827), Book of the Seasons (1831), Literature and Romances of Northern Europe (1852), Stories of English Life (1853), and Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain. William Howitt's chief works, besides contributions to newspapers and magazines, were History of Priestcraft (1833); Pantika (1835); Rural Life in England (1837); Visits to Remarkable Places (1838; second series, 1841); Colonisation and Christianity (1838); Boy's Country Book (1839); Student Life of Germany (1841); Homes and Haunts of the Poets (1847); Land, Labour, and Gold (1855); Illustrated History of England (6 vols. 1856-61); History of the Supernatural (1863); Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand (1865); Mad War Planet, and other Poems (1871). See Mary Howitt, an Autobiography, edited by her daughter, Margaret Howitt (2 vols. 1889).