Mary Darwall (née Whateley; 1738 – 5 December 1825), who sometimes wrote as Harriett Airey, was an English
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
and
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just
Readin ...
. She belonged to the
Shenstone Circle of writers gathered round
William Shenstone
William Shenstone (18 November 171411 February 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of History of gardening#Picturesque and English Landscape gardens, landscape gardening through the development of his estate, ''The ...
in the
English Midlands
The Midlands is the central region of England, to the south of Northern England, to the north of southern England, to the east of Wales, and to the west of the North Sea. The Midlands comprises the ceremonial counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshi ...
. She later explored subjects that included the nature of female friendship and the place of women writers.
Life and work
Born in
Beoley
Beoley is a small village and larger civil parish north of Redditch in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire. It adjoins Warwickshire to the east. The 2021 census gave a parish population of 984, mostly at Holt End. The parish includes the ...
,
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...
into the prosperous farming family of William Whateley (1694–1763), Mary Whateley was the youngest of nine children, of whom seven survived infancy.
[Breen, Jennifer, "Whateley (married name Darwall), Mary", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford, UK: OUP]
Retrieved 10 January 2016, pay-walled
/ref> She had little formal education, but by 1759 she was having poems published in ''The Gentleman's Magazine
''The Gentleman's Magazine'' was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1907, ceasing publication altogether in 1922. It was the first to use the term ''m ...
'' as Harriett Airey or Airy.
In 1760 Whateley moved to Walsall
Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located ...
in Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...
to work as a housekeeper to her brother. There her poetry was noticed in 1761 by William Shenstone
William Shenstone (18 November 171411 February 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of History of gardening#Picturesque and English Landscape gardens, landscape gardening through the development of his estate, ''The ...
, who was impressed: "That she has generous and delicate sentiments, as well as ingenuity, may, I think, be fairly concluded from the whole tenor of her Poetry."
Her first volume of ''Original Poems on Several Occasions'' appeared from Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley (13 February 1703 – 23 September 1764) was an English bookseller, publisher, poet, playwright, and miscellaneous writer.
Life
Dodsley was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school.
H ...
in 1764. It held 30 works, including ode
An ode (from ) is a type of lyric poetry, with its origins in Ancient Greece. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structu ...
s and hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' d ...
s and a satire, "The Power of Destiny", which considers how different her existence would have been had she been born male. It went through several editions in London, Dublin and Walsall.[''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English'', eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 266.] She stands up in a Dedication for the place of women in literature, saying she looks down "with a just contempt on the invidious reflections... of Prejudice" against that. She presents herself also as a foe to negativism: "Nought I condemn but that Excess which clouds/The mental Faculties, to soothe the Sense:/Let Reason, Truth, and Virtue, guide thy Steps,/And ev'ry Blessing Heav'n bestows be thine."
In 1766 Whateley married John Darwall, a widowed clergyman and father of five or six, by whom she had six further children. Despite family responsibilities and helping her husband to run a printing press, she continued to write, producing hymns for her husband's congregation, perhaps the best known of these being the tune Darwall, usually sung to "Rejoice, the Lord is King". This appears in 221 hymnals. She also wrote a play for a local theatre. At least five of her poems appeared in miscellanies
A miscellany (, ) is a collection of various pieces of writing by different authors. Meaning a mixture, medley, or assortment, a wikt:miscellany, miscellany can include pieces on many subjects and in a variety of different Literary genre, forms. ...
between 1770 and 1785. ''Liberty: An Elegy'', for example, appeared in that form in 1775 and again in 1783. Her poem "Female Friendship", which appeared in ''The Westminster Magazine'' in April 1776, puts this in a context of self-sacrificing heterosexual friendship.
On the death of her husband in 1789, Mary Darwall moved to Deritend
Deritend is a historic area of Birmingham, England, built around a crossing point of the River Rea. It is first mentioned in 1276. Today Deritend is usually considered to be part of Digbeth.
History
Deritend was a crossing point of the River ...
, Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
, and then in 1793 to Newtown in Montgomeryshire
Montgomeryshire ( ) was Historic counties of Wales, one of the thirteen counties of Wales that existed from 1536 until their abolishment in 1974. It was named after its county town, Montgomery, Powys, Montgomery, which in turn was named after ...
, from where she published in 1794 a second collection, ''Poems on Several Occasions''. This included some work by others, probably two of her daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, would publish ''The Storm, with Other Poems'' in 1810, to which Mary in turn is thought to have contributed four poems.[Introductory matter in ''Eighteenth-Century Women Poets'', ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford, UK: OUP, 1990 ]989
Year 989 ( CMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Emperor Basil II uses his contingent of 6,000 Varangians to help him defeat Bardas Phokas (the Younger), who suffe ...
p. 25
Retrieved 10 January 2016.
/ref>
Mary Darwall died in Walsall on 5 December 1825.
Publications
*''Original Poems on Several Occasions'' (1764)
*''Poems on Several Occasions'' (2 volumes, 1794). Online
Retrieved 10 January 2016.
External sources
*"The Pleasure of Contemplation by Miss Whateley", from ''Original Poems...'', onlin
Retrieved 10 January 2016
*"On the Author's Husband Desiring her to Write Some Verses", reprinted in Deborah Kennedy: "Literary Women. Book Review", ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' 35.2 (2002), pp. 320–323. This points out the time constraints on a busy housewife.
*"Written on Walking in the Woods of Gregynog in Montgomeryshire", from ''Poems on Several Occasions'', onlin
Retrieved 10 January 2016
*Scholarly assessment: Ann Messenger: ''Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall, 1738–1825'' (New York: AMS Press, 1999)
References
External links
Mary Darwall
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whateley, Mary
1738 births
1825 deaths
English women poets
Anglican poets
Writers from Worcestershire
Pseudonymous women writers
18th-century English women writers
18th-century pseudonymous writers
People from Bromsgrove District