title: Constance Howell
text: # Constance Howell
  
  Constance Howell was a novelist and socialist.
  
  Like many contemporary political novelists like Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness, Howell's novels sometimes suffered from political critique. Her most well-known novel was A More Excellent Way (1888), which is thought to be semi-autobiographical; it recounts the 'counter-conversion' of the protagonist Agatha Hathaway away from Christianity towards freethought. It was reviewed harshly in The Spectator.
  
  Howell also wrote a series of three books for children during the 1880s, which explained elements of Western religious history from a critical freethinking perspective: Biography of Jesus Christ, The After Life of the Apostles and History of the Jews.
  
  