William Howitt
William Howitt (1792-1879) was an English author born in Heanor, Derbyshire, into a family associated with the Society of Friends. Initially apprenticed as a cabinet-maker, he abandoned this path to pursue writing and farming. In 1821, he married fellow Quaker Mary Botham, and together they had six children and became prominent figures in the literary community known as the "Sherwood poets." Howitt gained recognition for his writings focused on rural life, appealing to a growing literate audience in Victorian England. The couple faced financial challenges, including bankruptcy due to their journalistic ventures, but Howitt rebounded by contributing to notable publications like Charles Dickens's *Household Words*. He briefly pursued fortune in Australia during the gold rush but returned to England and became involved in Spiritualism after personal tragedies. By the end of his life, he had established a significant literary legacy and had moved to Rome, where he passed away in 1879. His contributions to literature and his advocacy for Spiritualism reflect a diverse and evolving intellectual journey.
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William Howitt
Author
- Born: December 18, 1792
- Birthplace: Heanor, Derbyshire, England
- Died: March 3, 1879
- Place of death: Rome, Italy
Biography
William Howitt was born on December 18, 1792, at Heanor in Derbyshire, the fourth of seven sons of Thomas Howitt, a mine superintendent, and Phoebe Howitt, née Tantum, a herbalist. The family was closely associated with the Society of Friends. Howitt was educated at Ackworth and Tamworth schools before being apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Mansfield, which he hated. He tore up his indentures in 1813 and worked on a farm owned by one of his brothers while writing for local journals. In 1818, he met Mary Botham, a fellow Quaker who also had literary ambitions; they married on April 16, 1821, initially moving in with his brother Richard in Hanley, running a pharmacy near the home of their brother Godfrey, a physician.
As William and Mary’s family expanded—they eventually had six children—they established a home which became the meeting-place of the “Sherwood poets,” with Robert Millhouse and Thomas Miller adding their talents to those of the three Howitts. Mary’s publications in volume form eventually outstripped William’s—which numbered about fifty—but he made up the deficit with his periodical publications, and they wrote a great deal in collaboration. He won a considerable reputation as a writer on the countryside, less plaintively nostalgic than William Cobbett, but his primary interest was in cultivating the minds of the new readers created by the gradual spread of literacy in Victorian England.
The Howitts moved to Esher in Surrey in 1836; they traveled extensively thereafter, and were mostly in Heidelberg from 1840 to 1843. They transferred their base to Clapton, playing host to a rich mix of German exiles, antislavery agitators, feminists, Unitarians, and various other unorthodox Victorians. Unfortunately, Howitt bought a half share in the People’s Journal in 1846 and launched the weekly Howitt’s Journal in 1847, with the result that he was bankrupted in 1848, the family reduced to penury.
Howitt became a regular contributor to Charles Dickens’s Household Words while restoring his fortunes, but in 1852 he and his two sons, Alfred and Charlton, joined an Australian gold rush with fellow writer Richard Henry Horne. Having failed to strike it rich, William returned to England in 1854, but his sons stayed; Alfred became famous as an adventurer and investigator of Aboriginal culture. Howitt was reunited with Mary in Highgate, where the company to which they now played host included several Pre-Raphaelite painters. Howitt worked extensively for John Cassell, writing the greater part of Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, whose penny installments (1856-64), were said to have sold 100,000 copies.
Having left the Society of Friends in 1847 to become Unitarians, the Howitts became ardent converts to Spiritualism after Charlton was drowned in New Zealand in 1863, and Howitt became one of the most significant English propagandists for the movement, rapidly compiling a popular History of the Supernatural. He was granted a civil list pension in 1865. He and Mary left England for good in 1870; he died in Rome on March 3, 1879. Although Mary converted to Roman Catholicism in 1882, she was buried with him in the Protestant Monte Testaccio cemetery in 1888.