Favell Lee Mortimer
Favell Lee Mortimer was a British author born on July 14, 1802, in London, into a Quaker family. She became notable for her contributions to juvenile literature, particularly in religious education, with her first significant work, "The Peep of Day," published in 1833. This book, which aimed to provide early religious instruction to children, achieved remarkable popularity, selling over one million copies and being translated into multiple languages, indicative of its global reach among missionaries. Mortimer also wrote "Reading Disentangled" and "Line upon Line," which focused on phonetic reading and reinforced Biblical themes, respectively.
Throughout her life, she navigated personal challenges, including a romance with family friend Henry Manning, which her mother opposed. After marrying Reverend Thomas Mortimer in 1841, she continued to produce educational texts and travel guides for children, though her works often reflected the racial stereotypes of her time. Following her husband's death in 1850, Mortimer retired to West Runton, where she remained active in community education until her passing in 1878. Her legacy includes both her significant impact on children's literature and the critical reevaluation of her works in modern contexts, acknowledging the prevailing attitudes of her era.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Favell Lee Mortimer
Writer
- Born: July 14, 1802
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: August 22, 1878
Biography
Favell Lee Mortimer was born on July 14, 1802, in Russell Square, London, the daughter of Favell Bourke and David Bevan, cofounder of the Barclay, Bevan and Company bank. Mortimer was one of five daughters in this Quaker family, and she traveled with her family to Brussels and Paris when she was a teenager. In her mid-twenties she was enamored with a family friend, Henry Manning, and converted to Evangelicalism. Mortimer’s mother forbid further contact with Manning, and Manning wed another woman who died four years after their marriage.
Mortimer published the first of her instructional books for children, The Peep of Day: Or, A Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving, in 1833. The following year, she published Reading Disentangled (1874), followed three years later by Line upon Line: Or, A Second Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (1837). By the time Mortimer married Reverend Thomas Mortimer in 1841, she had written the books that would make her reputation as a best-selling author of juvenile literature, although many of her later works were published anonymously.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Mortimer’s The Peep of Day had sold more than one million copies and had been translated into thirty-eight languages. These languages included Yoruba, Tamil, and Cree-Ojbbeway, suggesting that the book was useful to missionaries. The book is a preparation for future Bible reading and instruction. It draws on the Scriptures to present a series of lessons about God’s continuing work in the world and the people he created, balancing scenes of God’s punishment for human wickedness with Jesus’s love. Line upon Line was written in the same vein, while Reading Disentangled presented a series of the first flash cards to teach a phonetic approach to reading.
Mortimer and her husband moved to Broseley, Shropshire, where they lived until his death in 1850. In the nine years of their marriage, Mortimer continued to write and publish books and embarked on a series of three books describing the countries of the world and the people who lived in them. The Countries of Europe Described (1849), Far Off, Part I: Asia and Australia Described (1852), and Far Off, Part II: Africa and America Described (1854) were written for children. They contain admonishments, such as this warning against French sweets: “Boxes of ’bonbons’ that look very pretty are sent to England; but children who eat many can spoil their teeth and hurt their health.”
Her books also contain brutal stereotypes of foreigners. In 2005, Todd Pruzan compiled selections from Mortimer’s three geography books that were published as The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World (2005). In his preface to the book, Pruzan wrote “the fear and anger (not to mention racism) of Mrs. Mortimer’s geography books apparently strained the bounds of good taste until they went out of print. Still, it’s only fair to note that Mrs. Mortimer’s prejudices, while shocking today, were both widely held and fit to print when she published them.”
Mortimer reworked Biblical themes and her reading flash cards in books written after her foray into geography. She retired to West Runton, near where her adopted son, Lethbridge Charles E. Moore, was a cleric. She established parish schools on estates owned by her father and cared for orphans until she died in August,1878.
In 1901, Mortimer’s niece, Louisa C. Meyer, wrote a biography of her aunt. In 1933, the centennial of Peep of Day, Mortimer’s nephew, Edwin Bevan, wrote his memories of his aunt for The Times of London; in 1950, Mortimer’s grandniece, Rosalind Constable, wrote an article about Mortimer for The New Yorker. Constable wrote: “If today we see only the humor (or pathos) of the sadism that ran like a dark thread through her books, it is only fair to add that she was considered in her day to be uniquely successful in communicating with the child mind.”