Prolific Victorian author Harriet Parr – who wrote under the pseudonym Holme Lee – died in Shanklin on 18th February 1900.
The authoress was said to have been a favourite writer of Queen Victoria.
She is largely unknown today, as she generally wrote under a pseudonym and shunned publicity. However, her works were massively popular in the Victorian era.
Harriet Parr was born in York in 1828. She moved to Shanklin in 1857 together with her sister Frances Parr. The siblings lived at Whittle Mead – a house they had built for them in in 1870 – which still stands on Westhill Road opposite the cricket ground.
Harriet wrote her first novel – Maude Talbot – aged 26. She went on to pen a novel a year between 1854 and 1883 – 30 in total. Parr’s work was published internationally, with several going into print in America and Germany.
Her literary output was prim and proper and would probably be far too tame for the modern reader – which is perhaps why she appealed to Queen Victoria.
The late Queen is said to have first been attracted to her writing after reading her story of Poor Dick, which was published in a collection of works by Charles Dickens in a Christmas magazine in 1856.
The featured image of Harriet Parr – the only one to survive to the present day – was said to have been commissioned by Victoria.
Dickens praised her 2nd novel Gilbert Messenger, admiring its “vigour and pathos” and stating that:
“It had moved me more than I can express.”
Harriet was also the favourite author of the founder of the largest lending library in Victorian London – Charles Edward Mudie – which may help explain her popularity in the 19th century.
Mudie apparently was something of a prude, who was attracted to her work because:
“[the] sense of decency in her fiction strictly conformed with its depictions of shy maidens and their decent love problems.”
Harriet also wrote a number of children’s stories, including the Tuflongbo elf saga and a canine tear jerker, The true pathetic history of Poor Match.
Crime writer William Roughead said of the Tufbonglo’s stories in 1939:
“Most prized of all, by reason of being my first love, was Holme Lee’s Fairy Tales. I have the book still, and unless old affection blinds me, I esteem it one of the best and most original of its kind ever written for the delight of deserving childhood.
“Why such masterpieces should have been suffered to go out of print, I cannot tell.”
Under her own name, Harriet was the authoress of the history of the life and death of Joan of Arc.
There are numerous references to Shanklin in Harriet Parr’s novels, which is fictionalised as ‘Whitburn’.
Here is her description of Whitburn-on-Sea (Shanklin) from the novel For Richer, For Poorer:
“They had their first glimpse of Whitburn village. It followed the course of the brook, between two slopes of down, where the water had worn a deep chine to the shore.
“It appeared from the distance a pretty paradise in a hollow, with a church-spire and red-tiled roofs amongst green trees – for there were trees all about the houses, and gardens with hedges of tamarisk down to the sea.”
Shanklin was also fictionalised as “Chinelyn” in the novel Against Wind and Tide, in which she wrote about the Chine:
“The Chine was an immense rift into the body of the earth, at the bottom of which rushed a narrow but impetuous torrent; at its head, this torrent poured over a lofty slab of rock, and formed a miniature waterfall, whence the spray rose in glittering clouds.”
Parr wrote numerous descriptions of Shanklin in her autobiographical In the Silver Age: Essays, which included the following illustration of Sandown Bay:
Harriet Parr is buried in the graveyard of St Blasius’ Church together with her sister Frances, who passed away in 1886
Harriet’s legacy to Shanklin was to leave the monies raised from the sale of Whittle Mead for the provision of a cottage hospital for the town.
Are any island Echo readers familiar with the now ‘forgotten’ works of Harriet Parrr? Let us know in the comments.
What a shame that lady authors like Harriet Parr had to write under a pseudonym. I will see if I can track down any of her books!