Author: Mary Magdalen Forrester
Author: Mary Magdalen Forrester (1859–1934)
Biography: Mary Magdalen Forrester was born around 1859 in Manchester, the daughter of stonemason Michael Forrester and the Irish poet Ellen Magennis. Her was a family of poets: her mother and her uncle Bernard Magennis were prolific poets and she and her siblings would also produce poetry. Forrester's childhood was a difficult one of genteel poverty and her father's alcoholism. The latter would inspire her life-long devotion to the temperance cause. The censuses find Forrester working in factories before establishing herself as a journalist and editor in the 1890s. By her own estimates, she contributed a thousand poems to newspapers and periodicals. Her fiction was limited to short stories and one novel Fighting the Traffic (1900). She was the long-time editor of the Temperance Companion. She never married and died on 15 March 1934 in Birmingham.
Author Tags:
References: British Census (1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1911); Annemarie McAllister, Writing for Social Change in Temperance Periodicals (2022); Probate
Fiction Titles:
- Fighting the Traffic: A Story of To-Day. In Three Books. 1 vol. Manchester: "Temperance Companion" Publishing Company, 1900.