Ward, Mrs. Humphry (Mary Augusta Ward)

Abstract

Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (1851–1920) was a prolific novelist, critic, and political activist. Granddaughter of Thomas Arnold of Rugby and niece to the poet Matthew Arnold, Ward belonged to one of the most prominent intellectual families of the Victorian era. She is best known for her novel Robert Elsmere (1888), by some reports the bestselling novel of the century. In more than twenty novels and numerous periodical essays, Ward addresses weighty subjects such as the crisis of faith and doubt, the rise of democracy, and the woman question. Frequently described by reviewers as the literary heir to George Eliot because of her treatment of serious philosophical and social issues, Ward's reputation waned in the early twentieth century due to her anti‐suffrage campaign and the changing aesthetics of literary modernism. Recent scholarship has renewed interest in her complex use of feminism and her representations of England's transition period.