When I was researching Victorian fairy-tale writers for my PhD I “discovered” Mary De Morgan. Just like many of us in NAWG, she was misunderstood, underpaid and overshadowed.
Mary was the youngest of seven children, born in 1850 into a family of intellectuals and non-conformists. She moved in William Morris’s artistic and political circle. Mary is best known today as a writer of fairy-tales but she also wrote short stories, some of which were published, others are gathering dust in Senate House Library. Mary also tried her hand at a two-volume novel called A Choice of Chance but the disappointment of poor reviews caused her to abandon attempting another. She also edited her mother’s reminiscences, Threescore Years and Ten: Reminiscences of the Late Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan” and wrote serious articles on such diverse subjects as “Co-operation in England in 1889,” “The New Trades-Unionism and Socialism in England,” “The Jewish Immigrant in East London,” and “The Education of Englishmen.”
It does not seem likely that Mary made sufficient money from her writing alone. In 1876 she received £14 18s 6d, being a third of the year’s profit from the sale of her first volume of fairy tales, On a Pincushion – another third going to the illustrator and the other third to the publishers.
Mary was a member of the Women’s Franchise League and she signed the Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage. She was an independent woman who had very strong views on the society in which she lived and the place of the woman within it. She could have written political articles, spoken at rallies and waved flags, but she chose instead to make her voice heard and her opinions known through her writing.
At the beginning of the new century she went to live in Egypt where she became a directress of a girls’ reformatory. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 57 and is buried in Cairo. There is no photograph of Mary that can be 100% authenticated, so all we have are her words to know her by.
