Mrs. Humphry Warda study in outdated Victorian reaction.
Date
1969
Authors
Grace, John Jeens
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Abstract
This is a consideration of the life and work of Mrs. Humphry Ward, one of the most widely read novelists in England during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. All Mrs. Ward's most important novels and some of the less successful boks were works of religious, social, or political propaganda; she strove in them for the practical realization of her ideas. In her social work she did achieve some positive results, but in the realm of religion and politics her efforts were not attended with much success.
Her failure can be attributed to the facts that she exerted herself in too many fields of activity and that her essentially mid-Victorian upbringing and character alienated her from the world of many contemporaries in the latter part of her life. Despite her many advantages and her success as a novelist, her life, expect for some of her social work, has proved a failure. Less than fifty years after her death, she seems a figure from the remote past. Yet, because of her influence in her own time and because of her connections with so many of the leading figures of the time, a study of her life casts light on the England of fifty to a hundred years ago.