WILLIAM HOWITT

WILLIAM HOWITT (1792-1879), a miscellaneous writer, who, with his equally talented wife, MARY HOWITT (1799-1888) (née Botham), did much to popularise the rural life of England, born, a Quaker's son, at Heanor, Derbyshire; served his time as a carpenter, but soon drifted into literature, married in 1821, and made many tours in England and other lands for literary purposes; was a voluminous writer, pouring out histories, accounts of travel, tales, and poems; amongst these are "Rural Life in England," "Visits to Remarkable Places," "Homes and Haunts of the Poets," &c. His wife, besides collaborating with him in such works as "Stories of English Life," "Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain," wrote poems, tales, &c., and was the first to translate the fairy-tales of Hans Andersen.