Mary Whateley

Mary Darwall (née Whateley, 1738 – 5 December 1825), who sometimes wrote as Harriett Airey, was an English poet and playwright and a member of the Shenstone Circle of writers that gathered around William Shenstone in the English Midlands.

Life and work

Born in Beoley, Worcestershire, the daughter of a prosperous farmer, she had little formal education but by 1759 was having poems published in The Gentleman's Magazine under the name Harriett Airey.[1] In 1760 she moved to Walsall in Staffordshire to work as a housekeeper for her brother, and in 1761 her poetry came to the attention of William Shenstone, who was highly 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".[2]

Her first volume of poetry Original Poems on Several Occasions was published by Robert Dodsley in 1764 and contained 30 works, including odes and hymns and the satire "The Power of Destiny", which contemplated how different her existence would have been had she been born male.[1]

In 1766 she married the widower clergyman John Darwall with whom she had six children. She continued to write, producing hymns for her husband's congregation and writing a play for a local theatre.[2] On the death of her husband in 1789 she moved to Deritend, Birmingham, before moving again in 1793 to Newtown in Montgomeryshire, from where she published her second collection of poetry Poems on Several Occasions in 1794.[2] She died in Walsall on 5 December 1825.[2]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Baines, Paul; Ferraro, Julian; Rogers, Pat, eds. (2011), "Whateley, Mary, later Darwall", The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 9781405156691, retrieved 2012-10-27
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Breen, Jennifer (2004), "Whateley (married name Darwall), Mary (bap. 1738, d. 1825), poet", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.), Oxford University Press, retrieved 2012-10-27