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Updated: May 9, 2025
A presentation copy of The Desolation of Eyam was sent to the Howitts' favourite poet, Wordsworth, who, in acknowledging their 'elegant volume, declared that, though he had only had time to turn over the leaves, he had found several poems which had already afforded him no small gratification.
It is one of a series of stories of everyday life in Sweden a beautiful book, full of the noblest moral lessons for every man and woman. In the summer of 1841 the Howitts, accompanied by their elder daughter, Anna, made a long tour through Germany and Austria, in the course of which they collected materials for fresh works, and visited the celebrities, literary and artistic, of the various cities that lay in their route.
The year 1831 was rendered memorable to the Howitts, not only by their first literary success, but also by an unexpected visit from their poetical idol, Mr. Wordsworth. The poet, his wife and daughter, were on their way home from London when Mrs. Wordsworth was suddenly taken ill, and was unable to proceed farther than Nottingham.
Lester's manuscripts whenever she could spare time from her usual writing. One afternoon she rejoiced Agatha's heart by announcing her intention of taking a walk. 'I shall stroll over to the Howitts. Have you any message for Deb? 'I think not. I hear that Patty has not been well this last week. You might take her a little pudding.
It was to be one of darkness, perplexity, discouragement. The Howitts had scarcely entered into possession of a new house that they had taken at Clapton, when news came from Heidelberg, where the elder children had been left at school, that their second son, Claude, had developed alarming symptoms of disease in the knee-joint.
In 1846, she left her native land for ever, as the melancholy event proved to join Mr and Mrs Spring in a European tour. Her letters home contain much pleasant gossip about some of the Old-World notabilities. Thus she records her interviews with Wordsworth in his Rydal retreat, with Dr Chalmers, Dr Andrew Combe, Mr De Quincey, the Howitts, &c.
The Howitts had no genius, nor were they pioneers, but, where the unfamiliar was concerned, they were open-minded and receptive to a degree that is unfortunately rare in persons of their perfect uprightness and strong natural piety.
Civic duties, together with the excitements of local politics, proved a sad hindrance to literary work, and in 1836 the Howitts, who had long been yearning for a wider intellectual sphere, decided to give up the chemist's business, and settle in the neighbourhood of London.
The Howitts took great delight in the pleasant Surrey country, so different from the dreary scenery around Nottingham, and Mary's letters contain many descriptions of the woods and commons and shady lanes through which the family made long expeditions in a little carriage drawn by Peg, their venerable pony.
By 1849 the improvement due to the exertions of the Prince Consort, the Society of Arts, and other powers began to be felt; while a wonderful impulse to human taste and ingenuity was being given in the preparation of exhibits for the World's Fair. The gentle Quakeress who, in her youth, had modelled Wedgwood figures in paper pulp, and clapped her clear-starching to the rhythm of Lalla Rookh, was, in middle life, one of the staunchest supporters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, and that at a time when the President of the Royal Academy had announced his intention of hanging no more of their 'outrageous productions. Through their friend, Edward La Trobe Bateman, the Howitts had been introduced into the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and familiarised with the then new and startling idea that artistic principles might be carried out in furniture and house-decoration.
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