Mary Augusta Ward
Mary Augusta Ward CBE (née Arnold; 11 June 1851 – 24 March 1920) was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs Humphry Ward.[1] She worked to improve education for the poor setting up a Settlement in London and in 1908 she became the founding President of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League.
For other people named Mary Ward, see Mary Ward (disambiguation).
Mary Augusta Ward
Mary Augusta Arnold
11 June 1851
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
24 March 1920 (aged 68)
London, England
Mrs. Humphry Ward
British
Tom Arnold (father)
Aldous Huxley (nephew)
Diarist (anonymous)[edit]
Throughout the 1880s Mary kept a personal diary of social and literary stories of the people she knew and met. She preferred to conduct her observations anonymously, and the diary was never published in her lifetime. Her reminiscences were heavily drawn upon by her friend Lucy B. Walford in a 1912 memoir[31] in which she is referred to simply as "Mary". Shortly after Mary's death in 1921 the diary was published, still anonymously, as Echoes of the 'Eighties: Leaves from the Diary of a Victorian Lady.[32] The identification of Mary Ward as the author of the diary was unknown until 2018 when an online article, about the diary's description of Oscar Wilde wearing a coat in the shape of a cello, cross-referenced her stories with corresponding information in the Walford memoir.[33]
Death[edit]
Mary Augusta Ward died on 24 March 1920, at 4 Connaught Square, London, and was interred at Aldbury in Hertfordshire, near her beloved country home Stocks three days later.[34]
Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime (2 vols.)
