Born: 6 January 1800, Ireland
Died: 30 January 1881
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Anna Maria Fielding, Mrs. S. C. Hall
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Sinéad Sturgeon and Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Hall, Anna Maria (1800–81), writer, editor, and philanthropist, was born 6 January 1800 in Anne Street, Dublin, the daughter of Sarah Elizabeth Fielding (d. 1856), a widow of Huguenot extraction. Her father, who died in Anna Maria’s infancy, came from Co. Wexford. She spent her childhood at the comfortable home of Sarah Fielding’s mother and stepfather, George Carr (d. 1823), of Graige, near Bannow, Co. Wexford. After the death of Mrs Carr in 1815, they moved to London, where in September 1824 Anna married the journalist and author Samuel Carter Hall (1800–89). The couple settled in Chelsea and had one daughter, Mary Louisa, who died in infancy. Samuel Carter was born 9 May 1800, at Geneva Barracks, near Waterford; his English-born parents, Robert Hall and Ann (née Kent), later moved to Cork, where his father made an unsuccessful attempt at running a copper mine. Samuel moved to London in 1821 and studied law, but never practised, instead embarking upon a diverse range of journalistic projects. He contributed reviews, art criticism, and gallery and parliamentary reports to a variety of newspapers, among them the British Press, Representative, and New Times, and edited many papers, including the New Monthly Magazine, Britannia, Morning Journal, Manners and Spirit of the Age, and Literary Observer. He also founded and edited the annual the Amulet (1825–37), which eventually became insolvent, leaving him with sizeable debts, but he was perhaps best known as the editor of the Art Union Journal (1839–80), through which he championed contemporary British art.
It was at Samuel’s suggestion that Anna Maria began her lengthy and prolific literary career in 1828. Having been encouraged by him to write an account of an old Wexford schoolteacher, he secured publication for the story, entitled ‘Master Ben’, in the Manners and Spirit of the Age. A year later she published her popular first volume, Sketches of Irish character, followed by a second series in 1831. She became a prolific writer, producing hundreds of sketches and stories for many papers, nine novels, and three dramas, as well as maintaining an energetic editorial career. Her most successful works were Irish in subject matter, drawing on memories of her Co. Wexford childhood, and benefiting from the contemporary English vogue for tales of Irish life. In addition to works such as Lights and shadows of Irish life (1838) and Stories of the Irish peasantry (1851), she adapted her story ‘The groves of Blarney’ for a successful dramatic production at the Adelphi Theatre, London (1838), the cast led by Tyrone Power. She resolutely avoided politics in her Irish writing (she was known for wearing green and orange ribbons in her hair), and although this endeared her to English readers, who came to regard her as an authority on Ireland equal to the Banims, William Carleton, and Gerald Griffin, her Irish reception was rather more circumspect. In a review of her novel The Whiteboy (1845), a writer in the Dublin University Magazine identified her literary constituency as ‘respectable English people’, and was highly critical of her tendency to write ‘an Irish novel suitable for their expectations’.
Though her present critical reputation rests largely on her Irish sketches, Anna Maria Hall also produced a large body of novels, drama, children’s literature, musical comedies, religious tracts, and short stories unrelated to Ireland. Her plays The French refugee and Mabel’s curse had lengthy runs at the St James’s Theatre and achieved widespread popularity. She often collaborated with her husband in literary projects, as in the widely-read travelogue Ireland: its scenery, character, etc. (3 vols, 1841–3), and held various editing posts at, among others, the children’s annual The juvenile forget-me-not, the St James’s Magazine, and Sharpe’s London Magazine. Versatile, prolific, and well connected, the Halls made a formidable literary team, and their home (by now in Brompton) became a favourite meeting-place for writers and artists such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, the celebrated soprano Jenny Lind, and Thomas Moore. Though Samuel’s political outlook and singular mannerisms often antagonised their guests – Margaret Oliphant described him as ‘a humbug of the old mellifluous Irish kind’ (40), and he is thought to be the model for Pecksniff in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit – Anna Maria was widely esteemed for her kindness and generosity. She was an active philanthropist whose concern for women’s working conditions involved her in charities such as the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen, and the Nightingale Fund. This preoccupation was also frequently apparent in her writing, notably Tales of women’s trials (1835) and The old governess (1858). She was essentially conservative in her social and political views, however, arguing that, if ‘women be displaced from their proper sphere, society, high and low, will receive a shock such as must not only convulse, but shatter the fabric’ (Retrospect, 437). She also supported the Brompton Hospital for Consumption, the Chelsea Hospital, street musicians, and teetotalism. Samuel shared many of her charitable concerns, and their joint evangelicalism accommodated an enthusiasm for spiritualism.
Despite their astonishing output (between them they produced well over 400 publications), the Halls’ finances were usually precarious. Some relief was afforded by Anna Maria’s civil-list pension of £100, awarded in 1868, and in 1874 (at an occasion celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary) 600 subscribers presented them with another £100 annuity and a gift of £670. Anna Maria’s last novel, The fight of faith, appeared in 1869; it was an intemperate attack on the proposed disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, which suggests that her attitudes hardened somewhat with age. She continued to produce pieces of journalism until shortly before her death, on 30 January 1881 at their home, Devon Lodge, East Molesey. Samuel survived her by eight years, living in relative seclusion and writing his memoirs, which appeared in 1883. He died 16 March 1889, at his home in Stanford Road, Kensington, London.
Anna Maria’s portrait as a young woman was painted by Daniel Maclise (1830) and William Brocas. An archive of both writers is held at the University of Iowa.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
HALL, ANNA MARIA, Is a native of Ireland; her birth-place was in Wexford county, where her family, whose name was Fielding, was of high respectability. When Miss Fielding was about fifteen, she was brought by her mother to England, and here they resided several years, before revisiting their native county. But the scenes which were familiar to her as a child, must have made a vivid and lasting impression on her mind; and all her sketches evince so much freshness and vigour, that her readers might easily imagine she had passed her life among them. An able critic observes that, “To her early absence from her native country is probably to be traced one strong characteristic of all her writings—the total absence of party feeling on subjects connected with politics or religion.”
Miss Fielding was very fortunate in her marriage connection with her husband, Mr. S. C. Hall, an English gentleman, whose. talents and taste, as a successful writer and artist, are widely known. Soon after her marriage, Mrs. Hall commenced her literary career; no doubt the sympathy and approval of her husband incited her genius, and assisted materially in developing her powers. Her first work, entitled “Sketches of Irish Character,” appeared in 1829. Of this, and her succeeding works, the following is, probably, a correct, though by no means a flattered estimate. We find it stated in “Chambers’ cyclopaedia of English Literature,” that “Mrs. Hall’s sketches bear a closer resemblance to the tales of Miss Mitford than to the Irish stories of Banim or Griffin, though the latter may have tended to direct Mrs. Hall to the peculiarities of Irish character. They contain some fine rural description, and are animated by a healthy tone of moral feeling and a vein of delicate humour. The coquetry of the Irish girls (very different from that in high life) is admirably depicted. Next year, Mrs. Hall issued a little volume for children, ‘Chronicles of a School-Room,’ consisting of a series of tales, simple, natural, and touching. The home-truths and moral observations conveyed in these narratives, reflect great credit on the judgment of the writer. Indeed, good taste and good feeling may be said to preside over all the works of our authoress. In 1831, she issued a second series of ‘Sketches of Irish Character,’ fully equal to the first, which was well received. The ‘Rapparee’ is an excellent story, and some of the satirical delineations are hit off with great truth and liveliness. In 1832, she ventured on a larger and more difficult work—an historical romance in three volumes, entitled ‘The Buccaneer.’ The scene of this tale is laid in England, at the time of the Protectorate, and Oliver himself is among the characters. The plot of ‘The Buccaneer’ is well managed, and some of the characters (as that of Barbara Iverk, the Puritan) are skilfully delineated; but the work is too feminine, and has too little of energetic passion for the stormy times in which it is cast. In 1834, Mrs. Hall published ‘Tales of Woman’s Trials,’ short stories of decidedly moral tendency, written in the happiest style of the authoress. In 1835, appeared ‘Uncle Horace,’ a novel, and in 1838 ‘Lights and Shadows of Irish Life,’ three volumes. The latter had been previously published in the ‘New Monthly Magazine,’ and enjoyed great popularity. The principal tale in the collection, ‘The Groves of Blarney,’ was dramatized at one of the theatres with distinguished success. In 1840, Mrs. Hall issued what has been styled the best of her novels, ‘Marian; or a Young Maid’s Fortunes,’ in which her knowledge of Irish character is again displayed. Katty Macane, an Irish cook, who adopts Marian, a foundling, and watches over her with untiring affection, is equal to any of the Irish portraitures since those by Miss Edgeworth.
The next work of our authoress was a series of ‘Stories of the Irish Peasantry,’ contributed to Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, and afterwards published in a collected form. In 1840, Mrs. Hall aided her husband in a work chiefly composed by him, and which reflects credit upon his talents and industry—’Ireland, its Scenery, Character,’ etc. Topographical and statistical information is here blended with the poetical and romantic features of the country—the legends of the peasantry—scenes and characters of humour and pathos—and all that could be gathered in five separate tours through Ireland, added to early acquaintance and recollection of the country. The work was highly embellished by British artists, and extended to three large volumes. In tasteful description of natural objects, and pictures of every-day life, Mrs. Hall has few superiors. Her humour is not so broad or racy as that of Lady Morgan, nor her observation so pointed and select as [[Author:Maria Edgeworth]Miss Edgeworth|]’s. Her writings are also unequal, but, in general, they constitute easy, delightful reading, and possess a simple truth and purity of sentiment that is ultimately more fascinating than the darker shades and colourings of imaginative composition.” Since this was written, our authoress has added to her works of fiction a novel called “The Whilebog.”
Mrs. Hairs residence was for some years at The Rosery, Old Brompton, near London, where her home was distinguished for its simple elegance, and the refined taste and hospitality of the gifted pair who presided in this pleasant literary retreat. At present they reside in Surrey, about eighteen miles from London; Mr. Hall is editor of the “Art-Union,” and Mrs. Hall a constant subscriber to its pages. There her latest and one of her most interesting works, “Midsummer Eve; a Fairy Tale of Love,” first appeared, with superb illustrations. The most distinguished artists in Great Britain furnished the pictorial semblances of the author’s pure and beautiful ideas; we hardly know which deserves most praise. The volume was issued in 1848, and well sustains the intention of the authoress: “I have endeavoured,” she says, “to trace the progress of a young girl’s mind from infancy to womanhood; the good and evil influences to which it is subjected; and the trials inseparable from a contest with the world.” Since this work there have appeared in the “Art Journal,” as it is now called, a series of illustrated sketches of the homes and haunts of genius and virtue in our land, under the title of “Pilgrimages to English Shrines.” Mrs. S. C. Hall, as she always gives her name to her works, seemingly desirous of associating her husband’s fame with her own, never loses an opportunity of inculcating those virtues as well as graces which make the happiness and enlarge the best influence of her own sex. Another beautiful trait of her character, is her active benevolence; she engages in those associated efforts to benefit society by taking Care for woman’s education and comfort, now beginning to be made in England. We find her name on the Committee for the Asylum of the “Governesses’ Benevolent Institution;” and in the establishment of “The Queen’s College” for the better promotion of female education, Mrs. S. C. Hall is warmly interested.