Page "Mary Augusta Ward" Paragraph 7

Mary Augusta Ward began her career writing articles for Macmillan's Magazine while working on a book for children that was published in 1881 under the title Milly and Olly.

This was followed in 1884 by a more ambitious, though slight, study of modern life, Miss Bretherton, the story of an actress.

Ward's novels contained strong religious subject matter relevant to Victorian values she herself practised.

Her popularity spread beyond Great Britain to the United States.

According to the New York Times, her book Lady Rose's Daughter was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1903, as was The Marriage of William Ashe in 1905.

Ward's most popular novel by far was the religious " novel with a purpose " Robert Elsmere, which portrayed the emotional conflict between the young pastor Elsmere and his wife, whose over-narrow orthodoxy brings her religious faith and their mutual love to a terrible impasse ; but it was the detailed discussion of the " higher criticism " of the day, and its influence on Christian belief, rather than its power as a piece of dramatic fiction, that gave the book its exceptional vogue.

It started, as no academic work could have done, a popular discussion on historic and essential Christianity.