During the summer of 1853, when Bessie Rayner Parkes was experimenting with writing poetry herself, she recommended Mary Catherine Hume's first volume of poems to a friend who was at the time editing The Westminster Review. Marian Evans, later known as George Eliot, had, however, already sampled the passages that appeared in a review in The Morning Advertiser. Her reply to Parkes shows complete sincerity if little tact: "Heaven preserve me from reading Miss Hume's poems! . . . I was quite cowed by their first extract and had not courage to proceed." Neither the kind gesture of Parkes nor the reviewer's praise enticed Eliot into noticing The Bridesmaid, Count Stephen and Other Poems (1853) in The Westminster Review.

Like many events in the life of Mary Catherine Hume, the interest of both Parkes and The Morning Advertiser in her first poetry resulted largely from her identity as the daughter of Joseph Hume...