by Ariadna Strempel Pons

I like to live with my characters, to get thoroughly acquainted with them; and I am always sorry to part with the companions who have brought me many a pleasant hour of oblivion — oblivion from the carking cares that crowd outside my study door.

– Annie French Hector¹

It’s not every day that we are able to interview our favourite authors, especially when most of them were alive centuries ago. This is why I believe we should thank Helen C. Black for interviewing thirty women authors in 1893 and publishing them in a book called Notable Women Authors of the Day. Amongst the many outstanding women in that book, Annie French Hector, also known as Mrs Alexander, would turn two hundred years old this year. Happy birthday!

Mrs Alexander as presented by Helen C. Black in her ‘Notable Women Authors of the Day interview (after page 58).

What I find particularly interesting about Annie French Hector is the discrepancy between her own words in her interview with Black and some of the information written about her by current scholars. This discrepancy—and the limited information on her—has also turned Mrs Alexander into a mystery bigger than when I first came across her name a few months ago. The scarce information forced me to look for bits and pieces of the author in her books, hoping they could provide more clarity on the brilliant author’s life. 

From Black’s interview, I learned that Mrs Alexander initially intended to write a play, which explains the dramatic tendencies of some of her novels, particularly Her Dearest Foe (1876). While I believe that many of her works could very well be imagined on the stage, I am thankful the author decided to “turn[…] them into novels instead” (qtd. in Black 65), since it would be a shame never to have had such a marvellous narrator, one that manages to draw the reader in with a few lines that introduce the death scene that marks the beginning of the novel: “‘You have been good! very good to me!’ The sounds were slowly, brokenly uttered, as though the mechanism that had produced them had well-nigh run down for ever” (Mrs Alexander 1). The book doesn’t let you go until long after you have read the three words that mark the end of the book “‘Her dearest Foe.’” (Mrs Alexander 399). 

It has been noted that Mrs. Alexander’s books often focus on a “young girl, torn between money, family and love (often complicated by legacy)” (Southerland 13), which seems to reflect some of the author’s own struggles throughout her life. “My stories are generally suggested to me by some trait of character or disposition, which I have adapted rather than produced” states the author in her interview (Black 63). 

Her Dearest Foe is a great example of this adaptation, focusing on a widow who is left to fend for herself after her rightful inheritance is stolen. Mrs Alexander, while not exactly in the same position, also suffered a lack of economic freedom when her deceased wealthy husband, in his will, stated that her inheritance was to be “paid to her out of a trust managed by the male executors of [his] will” (Nash 127-28). The non-reliable payments of that trust forced Mrs Alexander to secure her own living through writing, something Kate, the heroine of Her Dearest Foe, also considers before finally deciding to open a bazaar at Berlin. 

Mrs Alexander’s last book, Kitty Costello (published posthumously in 1904) also features many autobiographical scenes. The novel focuses on a girl called Kitty who leaves Ireland at a young age and has to adapt to English society when she moves to London. Our author faced similar circumstances when, at nineteen, her father lost most of his money, forcing his family to move from Ireland, their hometown, to Liverpool, eventually settling in London. During her time there, she anonymously published Agnes Waring (1854), Kate Vernon (1855), and The Happy Cottage (1856). 

“No, I have not much method, […] nor am I quite without it,” Mrs Alexander tells Black relating to writing (63). However, the author proceeds to tell her interviewer that the creation of characters and their traits is the most important part of writing for her: “If I can but place the workings of heart and mind before my readers, the incidents which put them in motion are of small importance comparatively” (Black 63). She proceeds to remark on the importance of a “strong, clear, logical plot” (Black 63), but it seems like, to her, the plot appeared naturally after having created and perfected her characters. Her avid observation skills and experience living in many places probably aided Mrs Alexander in bringing to life those characters.

She travelled quite a lot, even settling in Germany for a few years to improve her children’s education. While she wrote some books abroad, she claimed that England was her favourite place to write, particularly London, which “inspire[d] her” (Black 65), and the over forty books she wrote during her lifetime can attest to that inspiration. We can thank Eliza Lynn Linton and Anna Maria Hall, two friends of Mrs Alexander, for having provided the “most valuable introduction [she] ever had” (Black 66) to W. H. Wills, a friend of Charles Dickens and co-editor of Household Worlds, where she published her first piece. This introduction opened many doors for the author, allowing her to enter the publishing world that she later blessed with her wonderful novels. 

The interview which, like the few scholarly references I found about Mrs Alexander, is too short to do justice to a once popular author, many of whose novels went into several editions and were even translated. It does, however, end with a praise of Mrs Alexander as a “lovable woman” (Black 66), eliciting a smile from the author, who responds with “I believe I have made many friends. You see, I never rub people the wrong way if I can help it, and I think I have some correct ideas respecting the true value of trifles. Yet I believe I have a backbone; at least I hope so, for mere softness and compliance will not bear the friction of life” (Black 67). 

Works Cited

Alexander, Mrs. Her Dearest Foe.  New York: Henry Holt, 1876. https://archive.org/details/herdearestfoenov00alex/page/n407/mode/2up.

Beller, A. M., and T. MacDonald. Rediscovering Victorian Women Sensation Writers: Beyond Braddon. London: Routledge, 2014. https://books.google.de/books?id=a0ODCgAAQBAJ.

Black, Hellen C. “Mrs. Alexander.” Notable Women Authors of the Day. 1893. London: Maclaren and Company, 1906. 58–67. https://archive.org/details/notablewomenauth00blaciala/page/66/mode/2up.

Clarke, Frances. “Hector, Annie.” Dictionary of Irish Biography. 2009. https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.003910.v1.

Nash, Andrew.  “Freedom and Power? Women, Class, and Inheritance in Mrs. Alexander’s Her Dearest Foe (1876).” Victorians Institute Journal 38 (2010): 127-48.  https://doi.org/10.5325/victinstj.38.2010.0127.

Summers, Montague. “Mrs. Gordon Smythies.” Modern Language Notes 60.6 (1945): 359-64. https://doi.org/10.2307/2911375.

Sutherland, J. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2014.