Volume 38, Number 4 · February 14, 1991
Fallen Woman
By Margaret Drabble
Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian
by John Sutherland
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 432 pp., $29.95
A hundred years ago, Mrs. Humphry Ward was one of the most famous women in Britain. She was highly paid, influential, and popular with an enormous readership on both sides of the Atlantic. And she was not only popular—she was taken seriously. She was no lightweight romantic, no Ouida or Marie Corelli or Elinor Glyn. Her novels were widely and warmly reviewed in the serious literary periodicals; they were discussed by prime ministers and professors and princes and archbishops. Her intellect was respected, her philanthropic projects were admired, and her political support was ardently canvassed. When she died in 1920, she was described by Dean Inge at the memorial service as 'perhaps the greatest Englishwoman of our time.' Yet now she is out of print and largely forgotten. Feminist scholarship, which has disinterred so many unjustly buried reputations, has been content to let her rest in oblivion. Why?
Review, 3223 words
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