The Corvey Novels Project at the University of Nebraska

— Studies in British Literature of the Romantic Period —

 

 

Some biographical information about Mary Meeke, especially as relevant to The Spanish Campaign

Very little is known about the author Mary Meeke. It is thought that she was the wife of Rev. Frances Meeke, who died in 1801, and whose wife (possibly our Mary Meeke) died Staffordshire in 1816. Nobody knows when she was born. Reverend Meeke received bachelor''s and masters degrees at Christ's College in Cambridge and published a volume of poems in 1782. It can be guessed that he was born around 1750.

Mary Meeke published under the names of Mrs. Meeke, Gabrielli, and sometimes anonymously. She also did some translations from French and German.
Beginning in 1795 she wrote at least one novel per year, and a few were published probably posthumously (The Veiled Protectress, 1819, and What Shall Be, Shall Be: a Novel, 1823). She was not bashful about the fact that she wrote for the popular audience. She advised new authors always to check with their publisher to see what sells before beginning a new book. She developed a formula that she used repeatedly and which combined Gothic setting, sentimental philosophy and an inheritance plot. Her publisher, William Lane of the Minerva Press, was known for publishing only novels with 'morally improving quality' and for rejecting any violence. Mary Meeke's novels enforce passive obedience and assert the values of the aristocracy, and the can reasonably be connected with the increasing dominance of conservative values in the fiction of the early 19th century. The Minerva Press (which published from 1790 to 1820) had a reputation for publishing "trashy" romance novels and having a mostly female readership. However, it was also known for large distribution and for reasonable pay to its authors. It seems clear that Mary Meeke was writing mostly for profit, with little interest in producing "timeless literature."

Among her readers was Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859, lawyer and politician, and author of a History of England). He claimed to 'all but know her books by heart.' He probably did; he supposedly could recite Paradise Lost by the age of twelve, and was well known for his memory. He wrote to his sister 'My tastes are, I fear, incurably vulgar, as you may perceive by my fondness for Mrs. Meeke's novels.' He wrote that her books are 'one just like another, turning on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank of life who eventually proves to be the son of a duke.'

SOURCES:

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.
Dictionary of National Biography. Volume XXXVII. Ed. Stanley Lee. New York: Macmillan, 1894.
Kunitz, Stanley J. Ed. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1936.
Sage, Lorna. Ed. The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Shattock, Joanne. Ed. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.

- Prepared by William Thomas, University of Nebraska. December 2, 2002

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