Mary Eliza Herbert (1829-1872)
A lifelong resident of Halifax, Mary Eliza Herbert contributed poetry and fiction to the city's literary culture.
22 August 1829, Halifax, NS
15 July 1872, "Bella Aire," Halifax, NS
Name at birth:
Mary Eliza Herbert
Alternate names:
Mary E. Herbert
M.E.H.
M.
H.
Marion
Note
This author's life has been researched earlier for inclusion in the
Canada's Early Women Writers project at Simon Fraser University. Information in this entry therefore may not be comprehensive, but has been verified.
Entry revised by Linnea McNally
Mary E. Herbert (1829-1872)
Born in Halifax to staunch Methodist parents, Mary Eliza Herbert and her elder half-sister Sarah Herbert were active in evangelical and temperance organizations in Halifax. After Sarah's early death from tuberculosis in 1846, selections of the two sisters' verse and prose were published together in
The Aeolian Harp (1857). From 1851 to 1852, Mary conducted The Mayflower, or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper, where she published much of her own work, including two novellas, Emily Linwood; or The Bow of Promise and Ambrose Mandeville. She contributed prose and verse to Maritime newspapers, including excerpts from a manuscript entitled A Woman's Thoughts on Passages of Scripture, and published at her own expense one volume of verse and prose, and three novels. A fourth novel, Lucy Cameron, left unfinished at the time of her death from tuberculosis, is at Dalhousie University.
For a more detailed biography, see her entry in the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
Published Texts
Fiction
Belinda Dalton; or, Scenes in the Life of a Halifax Belle (Halifax, NS: Author, 1859)
Woman as She Should Be; or, Agnes Wiltshire (Halifax, NS: Author, 1861)
A Young Man's Choice (Halifax, NS: Author, 1869)
Poetry
The Aeolian Harp (Halifax, NS: Fuller, 1857)—with Sarah Herbert
Flowers by the Wayside: A Miscellany of Prose and Verse (Halifax, NS: Author, 1865)
Periodical Contributions
Acadian Reporter (Halifax, NS)
Halifax Morning Sun
Halifax Provincial Wesleyan
The Mayflower, or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper (Halifax, NS)
The Nova Scotian (Halifax, NS)
Other Publications
Anthologized in:
Whyte-Edgar, Mrs. C.M., ed. A Wreath of Canadian Song: Containing Biographical Sketches and Numerous Selections from Deceased Canadian Poets (Toronto: Briggs, 1910).
Family and Relationships
Father: Nicholas Michael Herbert (21 September 1801 – c1889)
Nicholas Michael Herbert was born in Ireland in 1801. Although descended from the Irish nobility—his paternal grandmother was the daughter of the first Baron of Desart—he was a shoemaker and blacking manufacturer at the time of his marriage to Ann Bates (c1800-1826). He and Ann had one daughter, Sarah Herbert (1824-1846). In 1826, the family emigrated from Ireland, but Ann died of typhus shortly after their arrival in Nova Scotia in 1827. The next year, Nicholas married Catherine Eagan, and they had five children together. He died around 1889.
Mother: Catherine Eagan (1801 – 20 May 1849)
Catherine Eagan was born in Ireland in 1801. At some point she emigrated to Canada, where she met and married widower Nicholas Michael Herbert (1801-c1889) in 1828. They had five children together. She died in 1849, when her youngest son was ten years old.
Siblings
Sarah Herbert (half-sister)(October 1824 – 22 December 1846)
Sarah was Mary's half-sister; her mother was Ann Bates, their father's first wife. Sarah began contributing prose and poetry to periodicals at the age of fifteen. She later conducted a school and dedicated her time to temperance organizations alongside her sister Mary Eliza. By 1844, she became editor of
The Olive Branch, a temperance newspaper, before her health declined and she died at the age of 22 of tuberculosis.
Catherine Anne Herbert(b. 5 April 1831)
John Otway Cuffe Herbert(b. 24 January 1833)
Nicholas Livingston Herbert(21 July 1836 – 1921): m. Adelaide Grace Spike (1833-1903)
William Black Herbert(28 May 1838 – 18 March 1926): m. Catherine Submit Field (1840-1898)
Religion
Methodist (Wesleyan)
Residences
Halifax, NS (1829-1872)
Education
Awards
Employment and Volunteer Activities
Employment
Editor and publisher,
The Mayflower, or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper (1851-1852)
Unpaid and volunteer work
Volunteer, Sabbath School
Volunteer, Benevolent Society
Volunteer, Temperance Society
Memberships
Benevolent Society
Temperance Society
Archival Holdings
Dalhousie University Archives, Halifax, NS (manuscript of Mary Herbert's unpublished novel Lucy Cameron)
Published Resources
1871 Census of Canada.
Blain, Virginia Beers, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements, eds. Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Woman Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1990).
Blakeley, Phyllis R. Herbert, Mary Eliza. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Web. 26 January 2017.
Campbell, Sandra and Lorraine, eds. . Light in the Darkness: A Sketch from Life (1865). Pioneering Women: Short Stories By Canadian Women, Beginnings to 1880 (Ottawa, ON: U of Ottawa P, 1993): 139-141.
Campbell, Sandra, and Lorraine McMullen, eds. Mary Eliza Herbert. Pioneering Women: Short Stories By Canadian Women, Beginnings to 1880 (Ottawa, ON: U of Ottawa P, 1993): 139-141.
Canadian Genealogy Index, 1600s-1900s.
District of Columbia, Select Deaths and Burials Index, 1769-1960.
Gerson, Carole. Herbert, Mary Eliza. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. ed. New, William H. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002): 485-486.
James, Charles Canniff. A Bibliography of Canadian Poetry (English) (Toronto: Briggs, 1899).
Punch, Dr. Terence M. A Herbert Mystery. Newsletter of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (April 2011).
Watters, R.E. Checklist of Canadian Literature and Background Materials, 1620-1960 (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972).
William Black Herbert. Find a Grave. Web. 26 January 2017.