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'Mary Howitt?s last translation from Frederika Bremer?s Swedish "The Home" charms me even more than "The Neighbours" did. The Athenaeum compares these books to Miss Austen?s, but I shd be afraid to tell you exactly how I wd modify the comparison. [The Athenaeum of 13 May 1843 said of the Bremer books: 'We have had nothing so simply life-like since Galt?s "Annals of the Parish" ? no pictures of female nature so finely touched, since Miss Austen.']
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 7 December 1842: 'I like Mary Howitt's lyrical poetry -- ballad poetry, I shd say distinctively, -- and once thought, -- before I had read the "Seven Temptations", that I wd prefer having her genius to work with, than either Mrs Hemans's & [sic] Miss Landon's. The Seven Temptations changed my view, & checked my admiration. She cannot sustain a high song'.