Marian Andrews
Marian Andrews was a biographer and novelist who published under the pseudonym Christopher Hare. She wrote stories set in rural Wiltshire, followed by historical fiction and biographies of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century figures, especially women, complaining that "all serious consideration was reserved for the men of the period" among other historians.
Life
Marian was born Mary Ann Hare in Brompton, London, on 24 February 1839, the eldest child of lawyer Thomas Hare and his wife Mary, née Samson. Her three sisters were the artist Alice Westlake, Katherine Clayton and Lydia Mary Clayton. Along with Marian, Alice and Katherine were signatories of the 1866 petition for women's suffrage. Alice and Katherine served on the central committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, and Katherine campaigned for girls’ education and raised funds for a memorial to Katherine of Aragon. Their four brothers were Sherlock, Herbert, Albert, and Lancelot Hare, lieutenant-governor of Bengal.The family settled in Surrey, where Marian and her sisters were educated at home. On 26 November 1861, she married Rev. William Ryton Andrews, a clergyman and amateur geologist. His work took them to Sussex, to Middlesex, and from 1873 to 1892 to Teffont Evias, Wiltshire, where her first stories were set. Her fictional village setting is modeled on her husband's parish, and shows a sympathetic understanding of his parishioner's lives including the interiors of cottages, folk customs, and the local workhouse.
From 1904, Marian began publishing biographies of Renaissance-era figures under her pseudonym, researching them from primary documents including published state papers and letters. Many of her works are set in Italy, which she visited every year. Her subjects included Isabella of Castile, Marguerite of Austria, Isabella of Milan, and Giulia Gonzaga. She also wrote a work following Dante Alighieri's travels in Italy in exile, pursuing her interest in early Protestant reformers, which she considered Dante to be.
Their sons were Launcelot William Andrews, a medical practitioner, who died in 1895 aged 31, and Arthur Westlake Andrews, a geographer and mountaineer who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in tennis. In later life, Marian settled in Eastbourne, Sussex with her husband and their daughter, Marian Elizabeth Andrews.