Mary Whateley

Mary Darwall (née Whateley; 1738 – 5 December 1825), who sometimes wrote as Harriett Airey, was an English poet and playwright. She belonged to the Shenstone Circle of writers gathered round William Shenstone in the English Midlands. She later explored subjects that included the nature of female friendship and the place of women writers. Life and work Born in Beoley, Worcestershire into the prosperous farming family of William Whateley (1694–1763), Mary Whateley was the youngest of nine children, of whom seven survived infancy. She had little formal education, but by 1759 she was having poems published in The Gentleman's Magazine as Harriett Airey or Airy. In 1760 Whateley moved to Walsall in Staffordshire to work as a housekeeper to her brother. There her poetry was noticed in 1761 by William Shenstone, who was impressed: "That she has generous and delicate sentiments, as well as ingenuity, may, I think, be fairly concluded from the whole tenor of her Poetry." Her first volume of Original Poems on Several Occasions appeared from Robert Dodsley in 1764. It held 30 works, including odes and hymns and a satire, "The Power of Destiny", which considers how different her existence would have been had she been born male. It went through several editions in London, Dublin and Walsall. She stands up in a Dedication for the place of women in literature, saying she looks down "with a just contempt on the invidious reflections... of Prejudice" against that. She presents herself also as a foe to negativism: "Nought I condemn but that Excess which clouds/The mental Faculties, to soothe the Sense:/Let Reason, Truth, and Virtue, guide thy Steps,/And ev'ry Blessing Heav'n bestows be thine."