Parr, Harriet (1828–1900)

British writer. Name variations: (pseudonym) Holme Lee. Born on January 31, 1828, in York, England; died on February 18, 1900, in Shanklin, Isle of Wight; daughter of William Parr (a salesman of luxury goods) and Mary (Grandage) Parr; educated in York; never married; no children.

Selected works:

Maude Talbot (1854); Gilbert Massinger (1855); Thorney Hall (1855); Kathie Brand (1856); Against Wind and Tide (1859); Annie Warleigh's Fortunes (1863); Her Title of Honour (1871); Straightforward (1878); A Poor Squire (1882); Legends from Fairyland (1860).

The author of over 30 novels as well as a substantial work on the life of Joan of Arc (1866), British writer Harriet Parr was born and educated in York, England, and set her sights on the literary profession at an early age. Her career was significantly helped along by the patronage of Charles Edward Mudie, the proprietor of the famous circulating library. Parr's novels, published under the pseudonym Holme Lee, were sentimental and moralistic in tone, very much in keeping with the times. Her second novel, Gilbert Massinger (1855), was sent to Charles Dickens, who praised it but pronounced it too long for publication in his journal Household Words. Parr also wrote a number of children's stories and published a collection called Legends from Fairyland (1860). The writer, who never married, died on the Isle of Wight in 1900.

sources:

Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.