With his brother Godfrey he arrived at Port Phillip in 1840. He farmed on the Heidelberg Road until his return to England in 1844Towards the end of 1839, Richard, in company with his brother, Dr. Godfrey Howitt, emigrated to Australia arriving in Port Phillip in 1840. He farmed on the Heidelberg Road until his return to England in 1844 and published his experiences in ' Impressions of Australia Felix during Four Years' Residence in that Colony, Notes of a Voyage round the World, Australian Poems/ &c., 1845. This miscellany of prose and verse was described by Leigh Hunt as 'full of genuine pictures of nature, animate and inanimate.' After a stay in Nottingham Howitt retired to Edingley, Nottinghamshire, and published in 1868 a last volume of verse, Wasp's Honey, or Poetic Gold and Gems of Poetic Thought.

He died at Edingley on 5 February 1869, and was buried in the Friends' cemetery at Mansfield. Christopher North says of him, in the 'Noctes Ambrosianae/ Richard has true poetic feeling, and no small poetic power.

One of Richard poems, "Thou art Lovelier", was set to music in 1870 by William Legge.

[The Reliquary, x. and xi.; Mary Howitt: an" Autobiography, edited by her daughter, Margaret Howitt, 1889, i. 117, 181, 222, ii. 169; Nottingham Daily Express, February 1869 ; Nottingham Daily Guardian, February 1869 ; Smith's Friends' Books.] E. B.