A miscellaneous writer, who, with his equally talented wife, Mary Howitt (1799-1888) (née Botham), did much to popularise the rural life of England, born, a Quaker's son, at Heanor, Derbyshire; served his time as a carpenter, but soon drifted into literature, married in 1821, and made many tours in England and other lands for literary purposes; was a voluminous writer, pouring out histories, accounts of travel, tales, and poems; amongst these are "Rural Life in England," "Visits to Remarkable Places," "Homes and Haunts of the Poets," etc. (1792-1879). His wife, besides collaborating with him in such works as "Stories of English Life," "Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain," wrote poems, tales, etc., and was the first to translate the fairy-tales of Hans Andersen.