Holme Lee

Harriet Parr (1828–1900) was an English author of the Victorian era, who wrote under the pseudonym Holme Lee. She also wrote stories for children.

Biography

The daughter of a commercial traveller, Parr was born in the English city of York on 31 January 1828. She never married and worked first as a governess before finding success as a writer with her first book, Maude Talbot, in 1854. From then until 1883, Parr produced about one novel a year, all published by the London firm Smith, Elder & Co., under the pen name Holme Lee. Charles Dickens, having enjoyed one of Parr's early books, bought three stories from her for the Christmas numbers of his weekly magazines. One included a hymn that would later be republished in several Protestant hymnals in Britain and the United States. Parr also wrote several volumes of fairy tales for children and some works of non-fiction, most of the latter under her real name.

She lived for many years at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, where she died on 18 February 1900.

Reception

Although Parr is now almost forgotten, like many Victorian authors, her books sold well and were generally well reviewed in her lifetime. Many went through more than one edition and several were also published in America. At least one was picked up by the Leipzig firm of Bernhard Tauchnitz, which specialized in inexpensive English-language editions for travellers.

Aiding Parr's success was that she was a favorite author of the founder of Victorian London's largest lending library, Charles Edward Mudie, "to whose sense of decency her fiction strictly conformed with its depictions of shy maidens and their decent love problems."