Harriet Ward

Harriet Ward née Tidy (1808 – 1873), was a British writer whose work is sometimes thought of as South African literature. She lived in the Cape Colony for a few years and her best-known books are set there: the non-fiction Five Years in Kaffirland and the fictional Jasper Lyle, the first English novel set entirely in South Africa. She also wrote articles for a military audience, unusually for a woman of that era. Her writing has stimulated discussion about whether or not she agreed fully with British colonial attitudes.

Personal life She was born at Thorp, Norfolk in 1808 to Colonel and Mrs Francis Skelly Tidy, née Miss Pinder, daughter of the Chief Justice of Barbados. This is when she started to publish full-length books, building on previous articles and short stories. The Wards may have lived in Dover before moving to Boulogne-sur-Mer in about 1851, but biographical details are scant. She died in 1873.

Writing Map of Kaffirland in 1851 by Captain Ward, used in the 3rd edition of Harriet Ward's book. Her first published writing was in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine in the early 1840s. She began with articles about her father and later contributed reports about war and life in "Kaffirland", and ran to three editions. In the same year Ward's first novel, Helen Charteris, was also published but a reviewer complained that the main romance was "encumbered" by sub-plots. Three years later her novel Jasper Lyle: a tale of Kafirland (sic) was more successful and was described in the Morning Post as "truthful and popular" with a "fidelity and vivacity" in its descriptions of "Kaffir life and scenery", "giving it at the present moment an especial interest". This too ran to three editions, plus two more in the 1870s after Ward's death and just before the Zulu War, when UK interest in South Africa was high. or even deliberately expressing "anti-colonial dissidence". One critic thinks she wrote at first with "full complicity in the prejudices of the frontier" but later revealed a "startling mismatch" with this in her novels.

Select bibliography Books available online

Five years in Kaffirland: with sketches of the late war in that country, to the conclusion of peace. Written on the spot. (1848) Recollections of an old soldier. A biographical sketch of the late Colonel Tidy, C.B., 24th Regiment, with anecdotes of his contemporaries. (1849) Jasper Lyle, a tale of Kafirland. (1851)

Other novels Helen Charteris (1848) Hester Fleming: the good seed and its certain fruit (1854) Lizzy Dorian, the Soldier's Wife (1854) Hardy and Hunter (1858)