Mary Whateley (or Wheatley) was born in Worcestershire where she was acquainted with William Shenstone. After contributing several items to the Gentleman's Magazine as "Harriet Airy" she published a volume of poems with Robert Dodsley that went into a second edition. In 1766 she married the Rev. John Darwall, managing a large family. Upon his death in 1789 she retired to Wales, from where she published a second volume of poems by subscription in 1794. She contributed to a collection by her daughter, Elizabeth Darwell, entitled The Storm, and other Poems (1810).
TEXT RECORDS:
1764The Pleasures of Contemplation.
1794A Scotch Pastoral.
1794Elegy on the Ruins of Kenilworth Castle.
1794The Self-Exiled Minstrel.
PUBLICATIONS:
Original poems on several occasions. By Miss Whateley. 1764.
Poems on several occasions. By Mrs. Darwall. 2 vols, 1794.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
no formal education
woman writer
poet
Gentleman's Magazine
The London Magazine
Lady's Poetical Magazine
Rev. Henry Francis Cary
Rev. John Langhorne
William Shenstone
REFERENCE:
Not DNB; not NCBEL.
John Wall, in Gentleman's Magazine 32 (February 1762) 84; David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816); Ian Gordon, in Shenstone's Miscellany 1759-1763 (1952); Todd, Dictionary of ... Women Writers 1660-1800 (1987); Lonsdale, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (1989); Jane Spencer, Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825) (1999).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Mary Darwall:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Mary Darwall:
1. | 1798 David Rivers, in Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798) 1:144-45. |
2. | 1816 Anonymous, in Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816) 86. |
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)