Marryat, Miss I Miss Marryatt I The first item ["Cast Away", XIX, 222–27. Feb. 5, 1859] is the story of a young English lady who, with her fellow passangers, is shipwrecked on a voyage to Australia. The second ["Friends in Australia", XIX, 584–88. May 21, 1859], narrated b an Englishman who takes a voyage to Australia for the sake of his health, records a horseback trip in New South Wales and some incidents, "for the most part true," related by the Englishman's friend concerning his experiences in Australia "twenty years ago, less or more." The item does not imply the writer's personal acquaintance with Australia. 

      Among Frederick Marryat's daughters who wrote books, two â€“ Augusta and Emilia – each wrote a book with Australia as setting. Augusta wrote Left to Themselves. A Boy's Adventures in Australia, 1878. Emilia, writing in the 1850s as Emilia Marryat, later as Emilia Marryat Norris, wrote a boys' book laid in Australia – The Early Start in Life, 1867, and also a boys' book with a New Zealand setting –Against the Maoris, 1874. Augusta or Emilia seems the most likely "Miss Marryat" to have written the two H.W. items.
     Percy Fitzgerald, discussing the contributors to Dickens's two periodicals, stated that Florence Marryat was a "contributor of an occasional kind," writing "stories which were much read, besides a few ligh articles for the journal" (Memories of Charles Dickens, p. 297). Fitzgerald does not make clear which journal he is referring to. His comment does not conclusively establish Florence Marryat as the H.W. contributor, though she may have been. 
     Frederick Marryat and Dickens were friends, seeing each other socially and at times corresponding. Dickens wrote one or two letters to Florence Marryat, as also a letter of introduction for her to the publisher Frederic Chapmand; occasional mention of her appears in his letters; one letter mentions her as author of Véronique, a novel that she dedicated to Dickens. A book by Marryat's brother Joseph, Collections towards a History of Pottery and Porcelain, was the subject of the H.W. article "Pottery and Porcelain"; a book by Marryat's son Frank (Francis Samuel), Mountains and Molehills, was the subject of the article "Tinder from a Californian Fire".

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971