Mary Augusta Ward, born in Tasmania, became favorably known through her principal novel “Robert Elsmere,” which delineates effectively the modern spiritual unrest and attempts to proclaim an ideal religion.
Another noteworthy author of Tasmania is Louisa Anne Meredith.
England has of course also a long roll of able poetesses, among them Sarah Flower Adams, who wrote the beautiful hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Alison Cockburn, Anne Barnard and Caroline Oliphant are the authors of many fine Scotch songs and ballads, among them the famous poems “Flowers of the Forest” and “Auld Robin Gray.”
In recognition of the grace and delicacy of her lyrics Elizabeth Barrett Browning has been called “the most distinguished poet of her sex that England ever produced,” but at the same time “the most unreadable.” Her fame rests chiefly on her “Drama of Exile,” the “Casa Guidi Windows,” and “Aurora Leigh.” The latter is a social epic, which contains many noble passages that give evidence of great originality and power.
Sarah Coleridge has been much admired for the gracefulness and the beautiful language of her poems “Phantasmion, a Fairy Tale”; “Sylvan Stay,” and “One Face Alone.”
The poems of Felicia Hemans have been the result of a fine imagination and temperament, and of a life spent in romantic seclusion. Many of them, as for instance “Homes of England,” “The Treasures of the Deep,” “The Better Land,” and “The Wreck” rank among the best ever produced.
Adelaide Ann Proctor, Catherine Fowler Philips, Christina Rosetti, Mary Blackford Tighe, and Caroline Oliphant have been the authoresses of many poems, still cherished for their beauty and nobility of thought.
The United Kingdom has also several woman historians, among them Catharine Macaulay, whose “History of England,” in six volumes, appeared in 1763.
The love and reverence she was taught from childhood to cherish for the queens of her country induced Miss Agnes Strickland, of Roydon Hall, Suffolk, to write her great work “The Lives of the Queens of England.” Its twelve volumes appeared at intervals from 1840 till 1848. In 1850 she began to publish a similar series about the “Lives of the Queens of Scotland,” completing it in eight volumes in 1859. Unresting in her industry, she wrote likewise “The Lives of the Last Four Stuart Princesses,” published in 1872.
Harriet Martineau too deserves an honorable place among English women of letters. Her series of tales designed as “Illustrations of Political Economy” and “Illustrations of Taxation” brought her at once into great prominence. Later on she produced an amazing quantity of works, relating to the laws of man’s nature and development, mesmerism, travel, and other subjects.