Catherine Marsh

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Catherine Marsh was always an avid writer since she was a small child, and first tried, unsuccessfully, to publish her writing (a romance) in the autumn of her twelfth year.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
10
Her first successful publication, The Victory Won, probably in 1853, was about a pious deathbed, the victory being that of a soul won for God. From that point on she published several other works, mostly uplifting biographies of Christian soldiers (and notably of her father) and religious texts with patriotic overtones, often relating to the working classes. These works sold in massive numbers.

Milestones

15 September 1818

CM was born at her childhood home, the vicarage of St Peter's Church at Colchester in Essex, the youngest of her parents' five children.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
1-2
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Marsh

Early December 1855

Writing as the Author of The Victory Won, CM commemorated a friend who had died piously in the Crimean War in Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars , Ninety-Seventh Regiment, in a first edition of ten thousand copies.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
122
Marsh, Catherine. Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars, Ninety-Seventh Regiment. J. Nisbet and Co.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

December 1857

At least some of the editions dated 1858 of CM 's most popular work, English Hearts and English Hands, or, The Railway and the Trenches, appeared in time for Christmas 1857. She published as The Author of the Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
156
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

January 1867

CM published a biography of her father which became one of her best-known works, through R. Carter and Brothers under the name His Daughter, the Author of Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
231

November 1877

The Navvy Mission Society was founded by the Rev. Lewis Moule Evans , perhaps in part as a result of the influence of CM 's English Hearts and English Hands, published twenty years earlier.
Garnett, Elizabeth. “How and Why the Navy Mission Society was Formed”. Woman’s Mission: A Series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women by Eminent Writers, edited by Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, Cambridge University Press, pp. 92-105.
93

New Year 1911

CM wrote what proved to be her final New Year booklet, under the highly suitable title The Time is at Hand. It is the last work that she wrote before suffering a stroke at the end of this same year.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
382-4

12 December 1912

CM died at 12:50 in the afternoon, probably of bronchitis, a year after suffering a severe stroke.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
387
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

15 September 1818

CM was born at her childhood home, the vicarage of St Peter's Church at Colchester in Essex, the youngest of her parents' five children.
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
1-2
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under William Marsh

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