Nome legale: Hall, Anna Maria
Altri nomi: Hall, Anna Maria
Hall, Anna Maria Fielding Hall
Data di nascita: 1800-01-06
Data di morte: 1881-01-30
Luogo di sepoltura: Addlestone Churchyard, Surrey, England, UK
Sesso: female
Nazionalità: Ireland
Luogo di nascita: Dublin, Leinster, Ireland
Luogo di morte: Devon Lodge, East Moulsey, Surrey, England, UK
Luogo di residenza: London, England, UK
Attività lavorative: novelist
short story writer
children's book author
playwright
magazine editor
Relazioni: Hall, S. C. (husband)
Breve biografia: Mrs. S.C. Hall was the pen name of Anna Maria Hall, née Fielding, born in Dublin, Ireland. She went to live in England with her mother as a teenager. In 1824, she married Samuel Carter Hall. She made her literary debut in 1829 with a sketch entitled "Master Ben," which appeared in The Spirit and Manners of the Age, a publication edited by her husband. This and other tales were collected into a volume called Sketches of Irish Character (1829). The following year, she published a book for children, Chronicles of a School-Room. The first of her nine novels, The Buccaneer, appeared in 1832. She turned her story "The Groves of Blarney" into a play that was popular enough to run for an entire season in London in 1838; it was the first of her three plays that was performed. In 1840, she published what has been called the best of her novels, the three-volume Marian, or a Young Maid's Fortunes. She collaborated with her husband on a book called Ireland, its Scenery, Characters & etc., and edited the St. James's Magazine in 1862–1863. She was also involved in philanthropy and played a leading role in founding the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, the Governesses' Institute, the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen, and the Nightingale Fund. She also worked for the temperance movement and the women's rights movement.
Nota di disambiguazione: Do not combine this page with that of the author's husband, S.C. (Samuel Carter) Hall, or with their combined author page. Thank you.

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Chronicles of a School Room di Mrs. S.C. Hall

When the narrator of this engaging work of children's fiction from 1830 is sent to stay in the small and quintessentially English village of Little Hampton, in Sussex, she is befriended by a local lady, one Lucy Ashburton. Falling ill, the narrator is visited and comforted by the elderly Mrs. Ashburton, who recounts to her some of the experiences of her thirty years spent in educating young girls. Divided into seven sections, these "chronicles of a school room" begin with the story of Marie de Jariot, a French noblewoman who comes to England after her husband is murdered in the French Revolution, and who becomes an assistant teacher to Mrs. Ashburton. The six stories that follow each focus on a different pupil or set of pupils instructed by the storyteller, and include:

Millicent O'Brian, which follows a twelve-year-old Irish girl who comes to England, and whose education with Mrs. Ashburton stands her in good stead, as her family and personal fortunes fall, and then rise again.

Sweet May Douglas, in which a mischievous but merry Highland girl grows from young childhood through young womanhood in Mrs. Ashburton's care, and eventually becomes a great benefactress amongst the people of her Scottish clan.

In The Two Indians, sisters Laura and Dinah Van Leyden, raised in Bengal, are sent to England to be educated by Mrs. Ashburton. Dinah is initially led astray by a very wicked girl, a fellow pupil whose extraordinary misdeeds include drugging her teacher, Miss Massenger, with laudanum (!!). Needless to say, this girl comes to a very bad end, providing a moral lesson to the sisters.

The Painter's Sister sees Clarinda Davenport also being sent to England for her schooling, and follows her as she gains an appreciation for a more well-rounded education, one which encompasses subjects other than art. Her more wide-ranging knowledge is useful, when she must eventually care for her brother.

Zillah Penrose see a young Quaker girl being entrusted to Mrs. Ashburton's care by her father, a childhood beau of the governess herself. Although the demands of Zillah's religion must be accommodated in her education, she eventually becomes an accomplished young woman, and a respectable matron of the Quaker community in the American city of Philadelphia.

Finally, in The Deaf and the Blind, twin sisters Clara and Anna Damer, the one blind (Clara) and the other deaf (Anna), come to Miss Ashburton's school, where the latter must struggle with her resentment, and fear that others are speaking behind her back. Eventually, each sisters makes an advantageous match.

Despite the title, only a few of the scenes in Chronicles of a School Room actually occur in the eponymous room, although the theme of education - how best it should be conducted, its benefit in times both happy and sad - is a primary theme of the book. Although its first came to my attention in Sue Sims and Hilary Clare's The Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories, it is not really a school story, in a proper sense. It is however, a well-written, engaging work, one I read with pleasure. Anna Maria Hall, who published as Mrs. S.C (Samuel Carter) Hall, was an Irish novelist, one who wrote for both children and adults. This work for children is dedicated to Barbara Hofland, a celebrated and prolific children's author of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It's interesting to note that Mrs. Hall's work was not particularly popular in Ireland, as she criticized both the Catholic and Protestant factions in that country, something one sees here in the story of Millicent O'Brian. When the subject of this story returns to Ireland with her husband, she begins a benevolent career helping her tenants, something that the author claims did more good than "the thousand and one writers, for and against Catholic Emancipation ever did (I dare not say ever could) effect."

Also of interest is the way in which disability is discussed in the final story. Mrs. Ashburton tells her listener that she has a natural sympathy for the blind, because of their misfortune, and she takes both Damer sisters in, implying that she has no issue with the idea of the disabled being educated. This is important, because deaf people in particular, were often considered mentally deficient by those around them in this period. Mrs Ashburton does assert at one point that being suspicious of others is a "besetting sin of deaf persons," who are "too apt to imagine that you are either talking of them, or at them." This stereotype of deaf people is not one I am familiar with, but the passages in question did make me wonder whether the speaker's mix of progressive and prejudiced attitudes were typical of that time and place, or whether (as I suspect) they were somewhat unusual. Not being well versed enough in the history of disabled people and their treatment, I am unsure. I did note another progressive episode, in the story of the Van Leyden sisters, who are apparently biracial - Mrs. Ashburton speaks of "some distant Hindoo origin - some intermarriage of gone-by times" - who are frequently described as both beautiful and brown, and who are taken to the teacher's heart. This also, strikes me as atypical.

Leaving aside such questions, this was simply a well-written little book. I wouldn't describe it as gripping, as it is far too episodic for that, but it is well-told and engaging. Recommended to anyone interested in early 19th-century English children's literature, or in girls' educational narratives in that literature.… (altro)

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AbigailAdams26 | May 17, 2020 |

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