Mary Herbert

Mary Eliza Herbert (1829–1872) was a Canadian publisher and poet. She published and managed the Mayflower, or Ladies' Acadian Newspaper in 1851, making her the first female newspaper publisher in Nova Scotia.

Biography Herbert was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1829 to Irish immigrant parents Catherine and Nicholas Michael Herbert. She began writing at a young age, following in the footsteps of her older half-sister Sarah Herbert. Herbert also had four younger siblings, Catherine Anne (b. 1831), John Otway Cuffe (b. 1833), Nicholas Livingston (b. 1836), and William Black (b. 1838).

Herbert was active in the Wesleyan Methodist evangelical group and the temperance movement. Herbert's novels were exclusively self-published as Nova Scotia had no book publishing firms in her lifetime. Her shorter works were published in several Halifax newspapers including the Acadian Reporter, the Halifax Morning Sun and The Nova Scotian.