William and Mary Howitt collaborated throughout a long literary career; the first of their joint productions was The Forest Minstrels and other Poems (1821).

His Popular History of Priestcraft (1833) won him the favour of active Liberals and the office of alderman in Nottingham, where the Howitts had made their home.

In 1838, the publication of his Colonization and Christianity, which was later quoted approvingly by Karl Marx in Capital, Volume I,[2] marked a significant moment.

Mary Howitt devoted herself to Scandinavian literature, and between 1842 and 1863 she translated the novels of Frederika Bremer and many of the stories of Hans Christian Andersen.

From 1856 to 1862 he was engaged on Cassell's Illustrated History of England, and from 1861 to 1864 he and his wife worked at the Ruined Abbeys and Castles of Great Britain.

Mary Howitt was much affected by William's death, and in 1882 she joined the Roman Catholic Church, towards which she had been gradually moving during her connection with spiritualism.

[1] William Howitt wrote some fifty books, and his wife's publications, inclusive of translations, number over a hundred.