Fox, Mary
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1798-1864) UK author, an illegitimate daughter of King William IV (1765-1837). Richard Whately (1787-1863), the Archbishop of Dublin, may have written part of the Proto SF novel initially attributed mainly to her; but she seems certainly the author of the frame story of Account of an Expedition (Planned and Conducted by Mr H Sibthorpe) to the Interior of New Holland (1837; rev vt The Southlanders: An Account of an Expedition to the Interior of New Holland 1860), neither edition credited on title page. A version of this frame had already appeared in Friendly Contributions for the Benefit of Three Infant Schools (anth 1836) edited by Fox; it recounts the Fantastic Voyage of the tale's protagonists deep into the clement heart of the Australian outback, where they discover a Lost Race of European extraction who have created a complex populous Utopia in benign collaboration with the aboriginal population. The elaborate descriptions of this planned society, which appear in the 1837 standalone volume, are (it seems) mostly the work of Whately (or his wife Elizabeth) and other members of what (it seems) may have been an informal salon mentored by Fox (see Women SF Writers). [JC]
Lady Mary Fox
born Teddington, Middlesex [now London]: 19 December 1798
died probably in London: 13 July 1864
works
- Account of an Expedition (Planned and Conducted by Mr H Sibthorpe) to the Interior of New Holland (London: Richard Bentley, 1837) [hb/]
- The Southlanders: An Account of an Expedition to the Interior of New Holland (London: J W Parker and Sons, 1860) [rev vt of the above: hb/]
links
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