ABSTRACT
Mary Howitt (1799-1888) grew up as a Quaker in Uttoxeter. The second daughter of Samuel Botham (d. 1823), a businessman and surveyor, and his wife Anne (née Wood), she was particularly close to her older sister, Anna. After being educated at schools in Croydon and Sheffield, she married William Howitt in 1821: together they led an active literary life, besides raising their five children. Her wide-ranging work included translations of Frederika Bremer's novels and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales in the 1840s, besides writing children's books, tales and poems of her own, such as Hymns and Fireside Verses (1839). Her Autobiography, which was published in 1889, edited by her daughter Margaret, begins with a long account of her ancestors on both sides of the family. The following extract begins in chapter 2 of the Autobiography, when Howitt was about seven, and her father was surveyor of Needwood Chase during its period of disafforestation and enclosure;
