preceding year, she and her husband began for Messrs. Cassell & Co. their annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays. This was published in weekly numbers, completed on 16 March 1868, and was reissued in three volumes with illustrations by H. C. Selous. Immediately afterwards, they started The Shakespeare Key, unlocking the Treasures of his Style, elucidating the Peculiarities of his Construction, and displaying the Beauties of his Expression; forming a Companion to The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare. This, though finished in June 1872, was not published until 1879. During the next few years the Recollections of Writers were contributed by Cowden-Clarke and her husband to the Gentleman's Magazine. Charles Cowden-Clarke died, age 90, on 13 March 1877, and in the following year, his widow was in England superintending the publication in volume form of the Recollections. The series, containing letters and memoirs of John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, Charles Dickens, and Charles and Mary Lamb, appeared with a preface by Mrs. Cowden-Clarke in 1878. She was in England again in the summer of 1881. In 1887, she commemorated the hundredth anniversary of her husband's birth with a Centennial Biographic Sketch of Charles Cowden-Clarke, which was printed privately, and in 1896, she published an autobiography entitled My Long Life. She died at Villa Novello, Genoa, on 12 January 1898, age 89. Selected works Kit Bam's Adventures: or, The Yarns of an Old Mariner (1849) Concordance to Shakespeare (1846) The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (1850) The Iron Cousin (1854) A Companion to Longfellow's "Hiawatha.": The Song of Drop O' Wather, A London Legend (pseud. Harry Wandsworth Shortfellow) (1856) Florence Nightingale (1857) World-Noted Women; or, Types of Womanly Attributes of All Lands and Ages (1858) The Life and Labours of Vincent Novello (1864) Honey from the Weed (verses, 1881) Memorial Sonnets (1888) My Long Life: An Autobiographic Sketch (1897) References Attribution Clarke, Mary Cowden. (1851). The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines. W. H. Smith (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009 ) Clarke, Mary Cowden, ed. (1848). Shakespeare Proverbs. London: Chapman & Hall "Clarke, Mrs. (Mary Victoria Novello, usually known as Mrs. Cowden Clarke)" The Century Cyclopedia of Names: A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of Names in Geography, Biography, Mythology, History, Ethnology, Art, Archæology, Fiction, etc. New York: Century Co, 1904 Bibliography External links Image, National Photo Gallery; npg.org.uk; accessed 20 September 2014 Mary Cowden Clarke's works; accessed 20 September 2014 Letters of Mary Cowden