Mary Hogarth Dickens' first child was named Mary in her memory. Hogarth was the daughter of George Hogarth (1783–1870), a music critic, cellist and composer, and Georgina Hogarth Thompson (1793–1863). She was born in Edinburgh, where her father was a legal advisor to Walter Scott, whom the young Charles Dickens greatly admired. She was the fourth of ten children, and the third daughter. Hogarth was named after her paternal grandmother. The name Mary Scott had previously been given to George and Georgina's third child, born 1817 or 1818, who was an infant when she died. Mary and her sister Catherine first met
Hogarth Press respectively. The Hogarth Press produced a number of publication series that were affordable as well as being attractively bound and printed, and usually commissioned from well known authors. These include the initial "Hogarth Essays" in three series 1924–1947 (36 titles), "Hogarth Lectures on Literature" (2 series 1927–1951), "Merttens Lectures on War and Peace" (8 titles 1927–1936), "Hogarth Living Poets" (29 titles 1928–1937), "Day to Day Pamphlets" (1930–1939), "Hogarth Letters" (12 titles 1931–1933) and "World-Makers and World-Shakers" (4 titles 1937). The "Essays" were the first series produced by the press and include works by Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf and Gertrude Stein.