[1][4] On the death of her mother Marion née Martineau in 1864 (by her own hand) when she was a toddler, Mabel was taken into the home of her paternal aunt Frances Greenhow (1821-1892) and her husband Francis Lupton (1813–1884).
His wife Frances was the niece of writers and reformers Harriet and Dr James Martineau; her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography focuses on her pioneering work expanding opportunities for female education, not least in co-founding Leeds Girls' High School.
Mabel grew up at the family seat of Beechwood, a Georgian country house in Roundhay, a village just outside Leeds.
She was raised alongside her cousins Francis Martineau, Arthur, Charles, and Hugh, all of whom contributed to the eminence of the city from Victorian times through to World War II.
[5] After publishing a short novel, A Latter-Day Romance, in 1893, Hickson became a prolific contributor of stories to periodicals of the 1890s.