Mary Elizabeth Mann, née Rackham, (14 August 1848 – 19 May 1929)[1] was a celebrated English novelist in the 1890s and early 1900s.[2]: 5 She also wrote short stories, primarily on themes of poverty and rural English life.[3] As an author she was commonly known as Mary E. Mann.
The church where Mann was baptised was destroyed by bombing in theSecond World War. Only the tower now remains
Mary Rackham was born inNorwich to a merchant family on 14 August 1848.[1][3][4] and she was baptised on 17 September in Heigham Parish Church in Norwich. Little is known about her early years, although Taylor states that she spent much of her childhood in the imposing family residence of Town Close House.[3]
After her marriage on 28 September 1871 to Fairman Joseph Mann, a farmer with 800 acres, she moved toShropham,Norfolk. Her husband was achurchwarden and Aparish guardian; she also became involved with theworkhouse, and visited the sick and other unfortunates of the parish, her observations and experiences informing her stories. Sutherland notes that lived in Norfolk her whole life, and wrote about the rural life in East Anglia that she knew so well.[5]
She took up writing in the 1880s in order to relieve the tedium of daily life in what must have been, after her upbringing in Norwich, a remote and uninteresting country village.[6] Her literary efforts were initially guided by Thomas Fairman Ordish, the son of her husband's sister, a literary-minded civil servant who became a notable Shakespearian scholar.[3] Mann published her first novel,The Parish of Hilby (1883) at her own expense, probably on commission.[note 2] and it was well received by the critics.[6] Man refused an offer of £12 from theFamily Herald to serialise the book.[2]: 73 Kemp notes that her early fiction was published anonymously.[10]
This began a career that spanned more than thirty years during which she published thirty three novels, hundreds of short stories, and fourteen plays, of which at least two were staged in London.[2]: 5 Her work was largely focused on the experiences of rural life in Norfolk from labourers toyeoman farmers during the late 19th century agricultural and economic upheaval.[3]
She had four children, one boy and three girls.[11] After her husband's death in 1913, she moved toSheringham, where she died aged 80. Her grave is in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul, Shropham. Her grave-marker is a carved open book with the epitaph We bring our years to an end, as if it were a tale that is told.[1]
Shropham was renamed 'Dulditch' in her novels, reflecting her view of the village as isolated and bleak. She wroteTales of Dulditch while living atManor Farm which inspired her view of rural life during the early 20th century. Formerly regarded as anovelist belonging to the ‘earthy’ rural genre, her short stories inTales of Victorian Norfolk are grim but authentic accounts of poverty and deprivation. Often described by some as Norfolk'sThomas Hardy, Mann was admired byD. H. Lawrence.[12]
Novels includeMrs Day's Daughters, andThe Patten Experiment (1899) where a group of well-meaning middle class folk try to live on alabourer's wage for a week.
Her work has recently been rediscovered as a major contributor toEast Anglianliterature, championed among others byA. S. Byatt, who in 1998 included her storyLittle Brother inThe Oxford Book of English Short Stories.[13]: 93-96 Byatt said that she had been introduced to Mann's writings byD. J. Taylor.[13]: vii Taylor suggests that this is one of the grimmest stories in Victorian fiction. In the story a mother gives the corpse of a still-birth boy to her living children to play with as a doll.[12] Byatt calls the storyplain, and brief, and clear and terrible though the narrator's tone is not simple. Byatt goes on to say that Mannis recording, not judging but her telling is spiky with morals and the inadequacy of morals.[13]: xix-xx
Taylor, who wrote the entry for Mann inOxford Dictionary of National Biography in 2004, considers her best work to be not her novels but short fiction written in the 1890s such asBen Pitcher's Elly,Dora o' the Ringolets andThe Lost Housen, arguing them to be the equal of Hardy's but based on a matter-of-fact mood rather than Hardy's "vengeful determinism".[3] These stories are collectively known as theDulditch stories, and Taylor wrote a foreword to an anthology of thirty two of herDulditch stories in 2008 asThe Complete Tales of Dulditch.[14] Taylor considers that it was Mann'sfirst-hand observation of a community enmired in the 1880s agricultural depression that gives her best work its sheen.[12] Richard King inThe Tatler also considered that Mann was a writer whose greatest success lay in her short stories.[15]The Scotsman said of her short stories that. . . Mann, has the talent of making her comedies, and tragedies complete and impressive within brief compass; and most of them have a touch of originality.[16]
Mann's work can be grim and unpleasant.The Times notes that she did not shirk from showing the ugliness of life whether describing the rich or poor.[17] Part of Mann's grimness come from her refusal to sugar-coat reality or ignore the most probable outcomes.The Scotsman said that Mann. . . never evades a logical conclusion. Her personages may not always suggest a very flattering view, of human nature, but such as they are, their fortunes are conducted with a scrupulous regard for probability, and there are no attempts to play tricks with the emotions of the reader, at the expense of his intelligence.[18] The lost heir is a recurring trope in Victorian fiction.G. A. Henty had one of his heroes stolen as a toddler,[note 3] and another lost to his father's family[note 4] but both acquire, through fortunate circumstances, the manners and polish of gentlemen, rather than being what one would expect from their upbringing in the workhouse or as fisher-lads. In contrast, when the lost child is discovered in Mann'sThe Victim (1917) the child is exactly what her experience of neglect, the workhouse, domestic service, and an unsatisfactory husband could be expected to make her, a foul-mouthed slattern.[18]
The following list is based on searches atJisc Library Hub Discover.[note 6] The list is not necessarily exhaustive. Note that at the time of posting (12 August 2020) there are only two books by Mann onProject Gutenberg, whereas theBritish Library has eleven titles available online and theHathi Trust ten, five of which are in common. The republication dates given in the notes are from.[2]: 224-225
Longer works by Mann
Ser
Year
Title
Publisher
Pages
Notes
1
1883
The parish of Hilby : a simple story of a quiet place
^Aldis and Inder calculate thatSusannah must only have sold sixteen or seventeen copies, as the royalties at 10% amounted to only 9s 9d.[2]: 77 However, when a down-payment is made, royalties were usually only paid after a given number of copies are sold, typically the number of copies needed to cover the down payment at the given royalty rate or less.
^At the time, there were five ways in which books might be published: These were:[7]
Outright sale of copyright. The publisher took the whole risk, but could make large profits. Jane Austen for example sold the rights ofPride and Prejudice for £110 and saw the publisher make a profit of £450 on the first two editions alone.[8] Sometimes the sale of copyright was limited to a number of copies or a number of years.
Profit sharing. The publisher runs the risk, although sometimes the author is asked to contribute a fixed amount, and shared the profits with the author. This is subject to the risk that the publisher inflates the costs, to reduce the apparent profit.
Royalties. The publisher takes the risk and agrees to pay royalties on every copy, on every copy over a certain number, on every copy after production costs are met (subject to the risk of inflated costs). Sometimes the royalties could increase after a particular number of copies. Mann seems to have sold her books on a variation of a royalty system with an initial down-payment by the publisher to secure the right to publish an edition, and then royalty payments based on sales of the book.[note 1] At the start of her career, Man could usually get a down-payment of £40, but this increased to £300 when her popularity was at its height.[2]: 77 Bently paid Mann £40 forThe Lost Estate plus another £35 if they sold more than 500 copies.[2]: 82
Publishing on commission. The author takes the risk, pays the costs of publishing, and the publisher takes a commission on each book sold (again subject to the risk of inflated costs). This is nowadays frowned upon as vanity publishing, but it was regarded as a legitimate form of publishing in the 19th century - this was the system that Jane Austen and many Victorian authors used.The Parish of Hilby was published at Mann'sown risk so it was probably published on this basis.[6]
Publishing on subscription, used more in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where a number of subscribers agree to buy a copy and the money is used to pay for publication. The publisher might be paid a commission on sales. This was the way in which Ryno Greenwall's encyclopaedicArtists and Illustrators of the Anglo-Boer War[9] was published, along with a sponsor to backstop the costs.
^In Henty'sFor Name and Fame: With Roberts to Cabul or Through Afghan Passes (Blackie, London, 1885), the hero Thomas Rippon is stolen by a Gypsy in revenge for the jailing of her husband. He is placed in a workhouse in Norfolk, grows up there and is apprenticed to a fishing smack. However, the additional love and attention he got from the wife of the gatekeeper of the workhouse, help to ensure that he never becomes coarse, and is fitted to sit alongside his father when he is eventually discovered.[19][20]
^In Henty'sBy Conduct and Courage: a story of the days of Nelson (Blackie, London, 1904) the hero William Gillmore is orphaned as a toddler, and is only saved from the workhouse by the small sum in his father's purse being enough to help a local fisherman buy a new boat. He is apprenticed to the fisherman and after many adventures is a fit person to stand as heir to his grand-fathers title and estates.[21]
^TheJisc Library Hub Discover brings together the catalogues of 165 Major UK and Irish libraries. Additional libraries are being added all the time, and the catalogue collates national, university, and research libraries.[25][26]
^Republished in 1903 by Methuen,[2]: 224-225 as a new edition. The price for the new edition is not stated, but most of the other novels in the advertisement are six shillings.[27] TheBristol Mercury saidWe have seldom read a more gracefully-written Idyll, odorous of English rural life, and thoroughly true to nature . . ., than is presented in this volume andIn every case the personages are most incisively and humorously portrayed, and we seem to be actually watching and listening to living men and women.[28]
^The Morning Post said:The sensational incidents of the book do not conceal the poor material of which it is constructed.[29] Available online at theBritish Library.[30]
^There were 300 sixpenny novels issued in 1903 by various publishers. Typically these were reprints.[32] Methuen may have used thestereotypes, or theirflongs, from the six shilling novel to print the sixpenny novel without any need to reset the type, reducing costs by using cheaper paper, smaller margins, simpler binding, and board covers.
^Republished in 1903 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 in a new edition as a Methuen Popular Novel at six shillings,[31] and as a Methuen sixpenny novel[note 9] in 1904.[33] This story of a young woman married to an odious husband attracted mixed reviews. Truth called itan absolutely nauseous study of vulgarity.[34]The Graphic said:There is a little too much of the tendency to coarseness which so many writers mistake for strength, but this is the only conspicuous note of feebleness in a novel which certainly ranks above the average.[35] TheMorning Post says:In short, although it is to be regretted that a more healthy tone does not reign in this tale it shows undeniable proof of the development of its author's talent.[36] Available online at theBritish Library in two volumes.[37][38]
^Republished in 1904 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 as a Methuen Popular Novel at six shillings.[39] It was published in the March 1905 edition ofThe Novelist, a monthly Methuen magazine that featuredlong novels by popular authors at the price of sixpence. Each number of the magazine was said to be as long as an average Six Shilling Novel.[40] TheMorning Post called the story far from pleasant, and the bounds of good taste aretransgressed in many of the author's scenes that, were they not lacking in power, might be termed Zolaesque, and that Mann's talent lies in another direction as can be seen. . . in her charming pictures of life in the tranquil parsonage. . .[41]St. James's Gazette said that despite the flaws in the bookthere are some strong characters in it, and the Plot shows considerable powers of invention.[42] Available online at theBritish Library in three volumes.[43][44][45] Available online at theHathi Trust in a single volume.[46]
^Republished in 1904 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 The Graphic says:One special merit in the novel is the skill with which its many portraits are contrasted, so that the strong points of each are brought into the highest possible relief.[47]St. James's Gazette said that the bookis a decided improvement the author's last effort, but the rather reckless way in which the characters are run over by railway trains and die of heart-disease—two of them do this—is trying to one’s nerves.[48] Available online at theBritish Library in three volumes,[49][50][51] and at theHathi Trust as a single volume.[52]
^Missing details from press notices.[53] Republished in 1904 by Methuen,[2]: 224-225 as a Methuen Popular Novel at six shillings.[39] Reissued in 1909 as a Methuen sixpenny novel.[54] TheMorning Post stated that Mann has done far better work than this and thatMiss Mann has done much with somewhat poor materials, without, however, being equal to herself.[55]The Graphic said thatthe work is by no means of first-class order but even so it was above-average fiction.[56] Available online at theBritish Library in two volumes.[57][58] Available online at theHathi Trust in a single volume.[59]
^Missing details from press notices.[63] Republished first in 1902[64] and again in 1914 by John Long.[2]: 224-225 Issued as John Long Sixpenny Novel in March 1904.[65] Available online at both theBritish Library in three volumes,[66][67][68] and at theHathi Trust in three volumes.[69][70][71]
^Republished in 1904 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 Second edition with a pen and ink frontispiece by Alan Wright. Available online at theBritish Library.[74]
^Republished in 1904 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 The Globe says that this isa graceful, sympathetic story of a man and a child and thatthe whole story is bright and engaging.[75]
^Missing details from press notices.[76] Issued as a Methuen sixpenny novel in 1903.[77] Republished in 1919 by Methuen.[2]: 224-225 Available online at both theBritish Library,[78] andHathi Trust.[79]
^Republished by Methuen as a Methuen Sixpenny Novel in 1908.[82]
^This is the story of a young woman with a complicated love life, where her choice of partner is constrained by economic necessity, but she is then forced into daily contact with her former love. ThePall Mall Gazette referred to it asthat very excellent novel.[83] It was serialised in several papers in England including theLowestoft Journal[84] and theIpswich Journal[85] under the titleAmong the Syringas. It was also serialised in other newspapers, including theIslington Gazette[86] and theBradford Daily Telegraph[6] under the titleLoved by Two Women.
^A collection of 12 short stories.[2]: 226-227 This was Mann's first published collection of short stories. TheDundee Courier says that the book is unpalatable and questions if it can be recommended for the shelves of a home library sayingThere is a great deal of good writing within the covers, and a great deal not good.[87] ThePall Mall Gazette says that while the book is not up to level of Mann's best work,There is the same sympathetic insight displayed here that characterized all the writer’s work—the same keen sense of humour and the same delicious portrayal of child-life and that the bookis certainly eminently readable.[83]
^Published as a Methuen Popular Novel at six shillings.[39]
^Republished in 1905 by Methuen[2]: 224-225 as one of Methuen's popular novel, priced at six shillings.[88]
^Second edition. TheNorfolk Chronicle said:It is in relating the experiences of Rose at Honeypot that the authoress has given the reader those vivid and realistic touches of rural life as it is lived in the agricultural villages that makes the work the best and most interesting that Mrs. Mann has yet written.[89] Available online at theHathi Trust.[90]
^This was adapted byRichard Pryce from Mann's novelThe Eglamore Portraits.[96] The play was first performed on 1 December 1909 at thePlayhouse. TheLondon Evening Standard consider that while the play wasdistinctly jolly, it was not that funny. The plot centred on a mother-in-law secretly working against her son's wife.[97] Available online at theHathi Trust.[98]
^This was an adaptation byRichard Pryce of a story by Mann calledFreddy's Ship.[96] The play was first performed on 1 December 1909 at thePlayhouse, as a curtain raiser forLittle Mrs Cummin. TheLondon Evening Standard called the play aserious little play and was complimentary about the play and the actors. The one act-play concerned a woman trying to keep the news of the death of someone from his mother.[97] Available online at theHathi Trust.[99]
^This is a collection of twenty-two short stories.[2]: 226-227
^A family suffers a reversal of fortune and one daughter is industrious while the other is idle. While theDaily Mirror called thisa most touching story.[100]The Northern Whig said that the book seemed to be intended for younger girls and that Mann wascapable of infinitely hotter things.[101] However theDublin Daily Express considered that this wasone of the most delightful novels we have read for some time and welcomed the bookas being a departure from so-called modernism and a return to the quieter style of the mid-Victorian era.[102] Available online at theHathi Trust,[103] and onProject Gutenberg.[104]
^This is a collection of twenty-one short stories.[2]: 226-227 The Scotsman said thatin every one of them is revealed something of the author's sympathetic power of reading and portraying character and her skill as a storyteller.[16]
^TheYorkshire Post said that thisis a simple pleasant story. . . and thatthough slight in its motive, is very good reading.[105]The Tatler was far more critical describing the story as not raising an inch above itsmilk-and-watery title, and that while Mann was always worth reading, this effort is scarcely worth reading twice.[15]
^TheIllustrated London News said that the novel hadno touch of reality and the charactersdid not succeed in touching either our hearts or our imagination.[106]
^The wife of an Indian official falls in love with a handsome young army officer and runs off with him. He abandons her just before the birth of her child. The child is consigned to the workshouse. Almost destitute she appeals to her husband for help. He accepts here back and they fall in love afresh. Years later as a widow, she meets the army officer and they go looking for the child, only to find the slattern, foul-mouthed wife of a fisherman, the true victim of their deeds.The Scotsman says that in this book Mann. . . continues with an equal thoroughness and success those methods which have made her one of the most artistic of contemporary British novelists.[18]
^A collection of short stories.Truth said that Mann seemed to have supped full of horrors and thendreamed the nightmare stories in the collection. However even though all but two stores are. . . more or less grim or ghastly, yet as being Miss Mann's you cannot if you once begin one fail to finish it.[107]
^Norfolk Record Office (17 September 1848). "Reference: BT ANF 1848_d-h: Baptisms solemnised in the Parish of Heigham in the City of Norwich in the Year 1884: Entry No. 1492: Mary Elizabeth Rackham".Norfolk Church of England Registers. Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com.
^Sprigge, Samuel Squire (1890).The Methods of Publishing. London: Henry Glaisher on behalf of The Incorporated Society of Authors. pp. 26–82. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheInternet Archive.
^Greenwall, Ryno (14 June 1905).Artists and Illustrators of the Anglo-Boer War. Vlaeberg, Western Cape, South Africa: Fernwood Press. pp. 262–263.ISBN0-9583154-2-6.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Mann, Mary Elizabeth; Taylor, D. J.; Tomlinson, Patience (2008).The complete tales of Dulditch with a foreword by D. J. Taylor and an introduction by Patience Tomlinson. Dereham: Larks Press.
^Mann, Mary E. (1890).One another's burdens. Vol. 1. London: Richard Bentley & Son. pp. 3 v. v.1 6, 304 p., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1890).One another's burdens. Vol. 2. London: Richard Bentley & Son. pp. 3 v. v.2 6, 276 p., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1890).One another's burdens. Vol. 3. London: Richard Bentley & Son. pp. 3 v. v.3 6, 277 p., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1893).In Summer Shade. Vol. 1. London: H. Henry & Co. pp. 3 v., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1893).In Summer Shade. Vol. 2. London: H. Henry & Co. pp. 3 v., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1893).In Summer Shade. Vol. 3. London: H. Henry & Co. pp. 3 v., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1892).In Summer Shade. Vol. 1. New York: Harper and Brothers. pp. 3 v., 8º.hdl:2027/uc1.$b250102. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheHathi Trust (access may be limited outside the United States).
^Mann, Mary E. (1892).In Summer Shade. Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Brothers. pp. 3 v., 8º.hdl:2027/uc1.$b250103. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheHathi Trust (access may be limited outside the United States).
^Mann, Mary E. (1892).In Summer Shade. Vol. 3. New York: Harper and Brothers. pp. 3 v., 8º.hdl:2027/uc1.$b250104. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheHathi Trust (access may be limited outside the United States).
^Mann, Mary E. (1895).Susannah. London: T. Fisher Unwin. pp. viii. 403 p., 8º. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheBritish Library.
^Mann, Mary E. (1896).Suzannah. New York: Harper & Bros. pp. iv, 352 p., 8º.hdl:2027/nyp.33433074880703. Retrieved12 August 2020 – via TheHathi Trust (access may be limited outside the United States).
.jpg)
