Mary Augusta Ward (June 11, 1851 – March 26, 1920), was a novelist.

Born Mary Augusta Arnold in Hobart, Tasmania, she grew up in a literary environment with a father who was a professor of literature and as a young lady married Thomas Ward, a writer/editor.

Mary Augusta Ward began her career writing articles for magazines while working on a book for children that was published in 1881 under the title Milly and Olly . Her novels contained strong religious subject matter relevant to Victorian values she herself practised. Mrs. Ward helped establish an organization for working and teaching among the poor and was one of the founders of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908. In this latter vein, some of her writings were under the name "Mrs. Humphry Ward."

In the summer of 1908 she was asked by Lord Curzon and William Cremer to become the first president of Britain’s Anti-Suffrage League . Ward agreed and took on the job creating editing the Anti-Suffrage Review. Using her writing skills she published a large number of articles on the subject and two of her novels, The Testing of Diana Mallory and a Delia Blanchflower, were used as platform's to criticize the suffragettes. In a 1909 article in The Times, Ward wrote that constitutional, legal, financial, military, and international problems were problems only men could solve. However, she came to promote the idea of women having a voice in local government and other rights that the men's anti-suffrage movement would not tolerate.

During World War I, she was asked by Theodore Roosevelt to write a series of articles to explain to Americans what was happening in Britain during the war.

Mary Augusta Ward died in London, England, and was interred at Aldbury in Hertfordshire.

Bibliography

• Milly and Olly - (1881)
• Miss Bretherton - (1884)
• Robert Ellesmere - (1888)
• Marcella - (1894)
• Sir George Tressady - (1896)
• Helbeck of Bannisdale - (1898)
• Eleanor - (1900)
• Lady Rose's Daughter - (1903)
• The Marriage of William Ashe - (1905)
• Fenwick's Career - (1906)
• The Testing of Diana Mallory - (1908)
• Daphne) - (1909)
• Canadian Born - (1910)
• The Case of Richard Meynell - (1911)
• The Mating of Lydia - (1913)
• The Coryston Family - (1913)
• Delia Blanchflower - (1914)
• Eltham House - (1915)
• A Great Success - (1915)
• England's Effort, Six Letters to an American Friend - (1916)
• Lady Connie - (1916)
• Towards the Goal - (1917)
• Missing - (1917)
• The War and Elizabeth - (1918)
• A Writer's Recollections - (1918)
• Fields of Victory - (1919)
• Helena - (1919)
• Harvest - (1920)

External link

• Works by Ward from Project Gutenberg