Haweis , Mary Eliza , 1848-1898 , nee Joy , writer and illustrator and family

Mary Eliza Haweis née Joy (1848-1898) was the eldest daughter of the Victorian portrait artist Thomas Musgrove Joy and his wife Eliza. She herself painted and exhibited. She illustrated books, designed book covers and many of her woodcuts appeared in Cassell's magazine. However, she is best known as an important figure in the female literature of household taste that flourished in the 1880s, her most famous work being The Art of Decoration (1881). She wrote several books and also contributed widely to contemporary women's magazines, mostly on women's clothes and interior design. In 1867, aged 19, she married Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), popular preacher, musician, lecturer and incumbent of St James, Marylebone. The couple lived in Welbeck Street and later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at the centre of an intellectual, scientific and literary circle. The marriage was a difficult one, with her husband's extra-marital affairs causing pain to Mary Eliza. They had three children Lionel (b. 1878), Hugolin and Stephen (who was delivered by the female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson). Mary died in 1898.