"She was born May Alden in Mechanicsburg, Ohio,[1] one of three children of Prince William Alden (a merchant and banker) and Rebecca (Neal) Alden.[2][3] She was a descendant of Captain John Alden, who came to America on the Mayflower.[2] She early developed an interest in literature and languages and by the age of 16 was contributing articles to a Cincinnati periodical.[2]
She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1872 at the age of 19 and a year later married William G. Ward, who held various academic positions over his career including history professor at Baldwin University near Cleveland[4] and later English literature professor at Syracuse University in New York and at Emerson College in Boston.[1][2]
Ward traveled for two years in Europe to continue her study of Italian, French, and German literature.[1] In 1887, she published a life of Dante, followed four years later by a life of Petrarch.[1] Reviewers praised these books for their skillful synthesis of the existing scholarship,[5] and the New York Times singled out Ward's lively, clear prose style and historian's instinct.[2] Author William Dean Howells commented that her work removed ""the stain and whitewash of centuries"" to reveal the underlying historical truth.[2] Her subsequent book on John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, and Thomas Carlyle, Prophets of the Nineteenth Century, was hailed as masterly.[2]
Ward also lectured on French and German literature and became a popular speaker on the women's club circuit.[1]
In the late 1890s, Ward and her family moved to Massachusetts, where she served as president of various organizations including the New England Women's Club (succeeding the poet Julia Ward Howe in that role),[3] the New England Woman's Press Association, and the Cantabrigia women's club.[2] She was also a charter member of the Authors' Club of Boston and one of the Massachusetts state commissioners for the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904.
She was killed in an accident when the car she was riding in on her way home from an evening lecture collided with an electric streetcar in Boston.[3]"
Emily Underdown was born on 28 July 1863 at Higher Broughton, Lancashire, England. Her parents were Lieutenant-Colonel Robert George Underdown and Lydia Underdown (née Dacombe). She was the second of four children. Not much is known about her early life other than her graduation from University College London in 1898 (UCL Record Office).
She lived in Lancashire and Yorkshire during her early life, moving to London at some point after 1901. She did not marry. She died in London on 5 September 1947. Her brother, Herbert William Underdown was a solicitor and a well-known art collector and antiquarian scholar. In 1949, her Dante collection was bequeated to the London Library.
Early Life
Héloïse Hannah ""Ella"" Durant was born in New York City, the daughter of Thomas C. Durant and Héloïse Hannah Timbrell Durant. Her father was a Union Pacific Railroad executive. Her mother was born in England and immigrated to the United States as a child.
Claudia Hamilton Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 18th May 1825, daughter of Robert Ramsay and Joanna Hamilton.
According to the reviewer of the Glasgow Herald, she was 'a niece of Alex Garden, formerly Lord Provost of Glasgow and her mother [Joanna Hamilton] was a niece of Christopher North's mother. We see in Mrs. Ramsay a remarkable case of distinguished talent descending in the female line to the third generation. In the first generation we have the Sims, of whom Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Hamilton were two. Miss Simm was one of the most brilliant conversationalist in Glasgow. In the second generation we find Lady M'Neill, the sister of Christopher North, and the writer of some capital sketches of Persian life and manners, which appeared in Blackwood. In the third generation, we find Mrs. Gordon, authoress of the "Life of Christoper North", and Mrs. Ramsay, the talented translator of Dante'
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was an extraordinarily versatile and prolific Victorian author who earned the living for an extended family. In addition to her copious fiction, she turned her hand to many forms of prose, writing biographies, historical guides, and literary histories. For many years the mainstay of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine literary reviewing, in later years, she broadened her repertoire to include social and cultural commentary. Her journalism enabled her fiction to take account of changing fashions, both literary and cultural, during the almost 50 years of her professional career. The tragedies of her personal life – all her children predeceased her – and her sense that she might have been a greater artist had she not been driven by her financial responsibilities to write so much darkened her later work. [...] Her fiction, variously published, anonymously, under the initials M. O. W. O and, after her widowhood in 1859, under the name Mrs. Oliphant, ran to some 98 novels and in excess of 50 short stories (Clarke 1986). Her nonfiction embraced biographies, both of the long-dead and more recent contemporaries, historical guides to a series of major cities (Edinburgh, Florence, Jerusalem, Rome, and Venice), literary histories, and over 300 periodical articles (Clarke 1997). Although she worked with a variety of publishers in the course of a long professional life lasting almost half a century (1849–1897), her primary allegiance was to the firm of Blackwood, whose official history she was engaged in writing when she died. [...] The periods she spent living in and travelling through Europe gave her increasing confidence in both French and Italian, although she would never become entirely proficient in German. Her knowledge of these countries’ canonical literature won her the editorship of Blackwood’s Foreign Classics for English Readers. She also took a lively interest in the new literature emerging from various European countries, encouraging her readers, many of whom would have learned several modern languages, to explore the literature, history, and cultural assumptions of their continental neighbors.
Possibly related to the prominent Dutch De Mey family.
She lived in Florence where part of her family was residing, she dedicated her translation to two nephews "Francesco and Federigo young citizens of Dante's city".
She was a subscriber of the Gabinetto Vieusseux and the record shows that in December 1882 she was staying at Madame Laurent, 28 via Maggio.
Katherine Hillard was a member of a prominent British Unitarian and Brooklyn family. Her cousin, Mr. Seth Low, was President of Colombia University (1890 1901) and served as Mayor of Brooklyn (1882-1885) and New York City (1901-1903).
She left England when she was seven years old (1846), spending many years in Italy and then moving to New York. She returned to London in 1884.
