Author: Henrietta Mary Batson
Author: Henrietta Mary Batson (1859–1943)
Alternate Name(s): Blackman (maiden name); Mrs. Stephen Batson (familiar name)
Biography: Henrietta Mary Batson was born in 1859 in Canada, the daughter of English parents. As a child, she returned to England where she married Rev. Alfred Stephen Batson, the vicar of Welford, Berkshire, in 1879. In 1892, she published her first novel, Dark: A Tale of the Down Country (1892), which she followed with five more over the next eighteen years. Batson also wrote gardening and genealogical works. Her husbands suffered from depression ("mental attacks") from the early 1890s until his death in 1908. Batson remained a widow until her own death in 1943.
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References: British Census (1881); W. Eugene Davis, "Neglected Novelist of the 1890s, Henrietta M. Batson: An Essay and Annotated Secondary Bibliography," English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 (1997); Times (3 December 1943)
Fiction Titles:
- Dark: A Tale of the Down Country. 2 vol. London: Smith, Elder, 1892.
- Such a Lord is Love: A Woman's Heart Tragedy. 2 vol. London: A. D. Innes, 1893.
- Adam the Gardener. 3 vol. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1894.
- The Earth Children. 1 vol. London: Hutchinson, 1897.