Hidden in Print: Mary Severn Newton and Books
- Debbie Challis
- Mar 30
- 3 min read
Mary Severn Newton was a voracious reader - a portrait of her as a teenager by her father Joseph Severn (below) shows her with her head in a book - and she recorded some of what she was reading in her letters and sketches. She also knew many writers through her father's extended Romantic and early Victorian cultural network. She is also captured by other people, such as her brother Walter's friend Arthur Munby (himself a poet), talking about literature and her favourite books at parties and over dinner. Although Romantic poetry, such as Keats and Tennyson, was her favourite, she recorded reading histories, novels and some science books.
It is clear that her whole family loved books and shared them with each other as well as constantly swapping them with friends. In a recent trip to the family archive, I found another sketchbook by her - mainly of everyday family life - and have made it available online here. Amusingly there is a sketch of her niece having a bath next to the fire, while Mary has her head deep in a book, indicating she was not the attentive babysitter she should have been!
The book is full of references to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRBs), Mary's work, looking after her young niece as well as reading Darwin - positioning the sketches very much in late 1859 / early 1860 after Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species had been published. The sketches also create some of the domestic atmosphere of the Severn family with Mary working hard, Walter interested in science and younger brother Arthur as a the teenage observer. My favourite is one that Mary draws of her brother Walter telling a 'good story', clearly to do with Darwin and Mary doesn't get it - though she is meant to be very clever and well-read. Many of her sketches poke fun at herself for her difficulty with understanding maths and budgeting, as well as science.
Mary is shown reading Homer while Walter drops his Darwin in exasperation. The titles on the book shelf speak to a literary house with Aescyhlus, Grote (probably his History of Greece), Aritotle, Hershel (presumably on astronomy or light) and Keats, of course. I spoke to my colleague Carol Ann Whitehead about Mary's love of reading and some of the women she knew and read at the Portico Library on International Women's Day early this month. In this 'in conversation' (and I wish Carol had had a microphone too to get more of our banter), we talked through actual books from the 19thC in the collection. Many of them were in poor condition but well-read. There is a teaser for it on the Portico Library YouTube Channel as well as a recording embedded below, whch I have populated with images either by Mary, or portraits of the women and pictures of their books. I was asked for a transcript of it but had to admit I just spoke and had just a few notes, so for those that want it there is a word doc based on the recording of the talk below. I have also added subtitles to the recording.
The transcript available below:
With massive thanks to TJ for recording and videoing the talk, the Birkenhead / Severn Family archive for allowing access and permission to archive images and letters as well as Arts Council England for funding my Developing Your Creative Practice grant.
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