Henrietta Batson

Henrietta Mary Batson née Blackman (1859–1943) was an English writer whose interest in the countryside and rural people was an important theme in her novels and much of her non-fiction. She often published as Mrs. Stephen Batson, or sometimes as H.M. Batson.

Life

Born in Hamilton, Canada West to the Rev. Thomas John Mark Willoughby Blackman and Ann Blackman née Gunn in 1859, Batson was living in England by 1871. She stayed there for the rest of her life, and her writing is rooted in English settings and issues. She married in 1879 at Monewden where her father was curate-in-charge, and where she had been an instructor in the night school and the choir. Her husband was the Rev. Alfred Stephen Batson, rector of Welford in Berkshire. Their daughter Mary Stephanie was born the year after their wedding but died when a few weeks old. They lived in the rectory for more than a decade but were then able to move to a smaller, more suitable house.

Batson's writing began to be published in the early 1890s. Her earlier novels seemed to have something in common with Thomas Hardy's, including their “Wessex” setting and exploration of the tragic side of life. She emphasised rural themes and settings in all her novels. She wrote about "rustic" characters However, she got only limited attention from the literary world. and they were also living together in 1939. When Henrietta Batson died at Swyre in Dorset in 1943, probate was granted to Hodgson.

Selected works

Fiction Dark: a Tale of the Down Country, London: Smith, Elder, 1892 Such a Lord is Love: A woman's heart tragedy, London, A.D. Innes & Co., 1893 Adam the Gardener, London : Hurst and Blackett, 1894 The Earth Children, London : Hutchinson & Co., 1897 The Gay Paradines, London, Stanley, Paul and Co.1909 A Splendid Heritage, London, Stanley, Paul and Co.1910

Non-fiction Hodge at home, in the Nineteenth Century magazine, vol. 31, 1892 Terrier and inventory of church possessions in the parish of Welford, Berks., Newbury, 1892 The rule of the laywoman, in the Nineteenth Century magazine, vol. 39, Jan. 1896 Town and country labourers: (answers to "The cry of the villages" by A. Jessopp), with P. Wyndham, in the Nineteenth Century magazine, vol. 46, 1899. The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald; with a commentary by H.M. Batson and a biographical introduction by E.D. Ross, London : Methuen and co. 1900 A concise handbook of garden flowers, London: Methuen 1903 A book of the country and the garden, London: Methuen 1903 The summer garden of pleasure, London: Methuen 1908

Other A history of the Blackman and allied families in Sussex, England, by Henrietta Blackman Batson (Mrs. Alfred Stephen Batson); with addenda, edited, revised, with new material by Marion Wincote Elliott, Los Altos, Calif. 1994 Index of Mrs Batson's scrapbooks, compiled by Alan W. Garvey, Newbury: Wickham cum Welford History Association c2003