Constance Howell (fl. 1877-1900) was a socialist and political novelist.
Career
Howell was a socialist and her novels had a political dimension. Like contemporary political novelists, such as Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness, Howell's novels sometimes suffered from political critique.[1] Her most well-known novel was A More Excellent Way (1888), which is thought to be semi-autobiographical. It recounts the "counter-conversion" of the protagonist Agatha Hathaway away from her upper class upbringing and Christianity and towards freethought and socialism.[2][3] It was reviewed harshly in The Spectator,[4] and To-day: Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism wrote that:[5]
"...we made a vow never again to look into a book calling itself a Socialist novel. We broke that vow and we have been duly punished; and we hereby do our best to save our readers from a similar infliction by warming them on no account to read the latest literary effort of Constance Howell. It is a perfectly preposterous production."
Howell also wrote a series of three books for children during the 1880s, which explained elements of Western religious history from a critical freethinking perspective and all shared the subtitle "Written for Young Freethinkers".[6] These were: Biography of Jesus Christ (1883), The After Life of the Apostles (1884) and History of the Jews (1885).[7]
Identity
Howell's dates of birth and death are currently unknown.[8]
