Margaret Hungerford (right) and Her Sister
August 27 is The Duchess Who Wasn’t Day, a day to honor Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. Hungerford was a prolific Irish author who published anonymously under the name The Duchess. Her best-known book is Molly Brawn. She wrote many other books including A Little Rebel, Phyllis, and Faith and Unfaith, as well as many short stories. She is credited with penning the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and making it famous. One of the few Victorian women who was able to combine a career as a highly productive writer with motherhood, she was the mother of six children. She died of typhoid fever at age 42 in 1897.
Many other women wrote anonymously in earlier times due to the constraints on women. Some of those are the Brontë sisters, who wrote under the names Currer Bell (Charlotte), Ellis Bell (Emily), and Acton Bell (Anne); Jane Austen, who wrote as The Lady; and Mary Ann Evans who wrote Middlemarch as George Elliot.
Celebrate today by reading The Duchess or one of the other early women authors.
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
~N
Today's Kidlit Book 