The Spider and the Fly

The Spider and the Fly is a poem by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), published in the 19th century in the year 1829. The first line of the poem is "'Will you walk into my parlor?' said the Spider to the Fly." When Lewis Carroll was readying Alice's Adventures Under Ground for publication he replaced a parody he had made of a negro minstrel song with a parody of Howitt's poem. The "Lobster Quadrille", in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a parody of Howitt's poem (it mimics the meter and rhyme scheme, and parodies the first line, but not the subject matter, of the original).

Writer
The writer of the poem was Mary Howitt, (12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) an English poet. She was born Mary Botham at Coleford, in Gloucestershire, the temporary residence of her parents, while her father, Samuel Botham, a prosperous Quaker of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, was looking after some mining property. Samuel had married his wife Ann in South Wales in the 18th century in the year 1796 when he was 38 and she was 32. They had four children Anna, Mary, Emma and Charles. Their Queen Anne house is now known as Howitt Place.

Mary Botham was educated at home, and read widely; she commenced writing verses at a very early age. Together with her husband she wrote over 180 books.