Mary Louisa Boyle

Mary Louisa Boyle (1810 – 1890) was an English writer and amateur actress who moved in the literary circles of Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

She was born on 12 November 1810 at Cavendish Square, London, one of six children of Captain Sir Courtenay Boyle and his wife, Carolina Amelia Poyntz.

The family lived at Hampton Court until 1840,[1] during which time Mary published her two novels, The State Prisoner (1837)[2] and The Forester: a Tale of 1688 (1839).

He took credit for training her to act in a letter where he referred to her later association with Charles Dickens:"Mary Boyle—that was Dickens’s prima donna—was of my training; her infant steps (she was five-and-thirty at the time) were first led by me; and I remember holding a ladder for her while she sang a love-song out of a window, and (trying to study my own part at the same time) I set fire to her petticoats!

1889) to her,[12] in which he reminisces about their younger days and invites her to keep her promise to leave London and visit him at his country home, Farringford, while she was in a period of bereavement.