Mary Louisa Molesworth

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MLM , writing in the later nineteenth century, was immensely prolific and successful as a writer for children. Of her publications (just over a hundred titles) only a few novels and volumes of stories are for adults, but these deserve to be better known.
  • BirthName: Mary Louisa Stewart
  • Married: Molesworth
  • Pseudonym: Ennis Graham
    This was the name of an actual, though not a living, woman. MLM may have liked the fact that to most readers it would sound like a man's name.

  • Indexed: Mrs Molesworth

Milestones

29 May 1839

Mary Louisa Stewart (later MLM ) was born in Rotterdam (where her Scots parents were then living) into a family which eventually totalled six children.
Voller, Jack. “Mary Louisa Molesworth”. The Literary Gothic.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 135. Gale Research, 1994.
135: 231

1876

"Carrots": Just a Little Boy, which is only MLM 's second book for children, is also one of her most famous. In its first year, it was published under the name Ennis Graham; it appeared under her own name in 1879.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 135. Gale Research, 1994.
135: 226, 229

1877

The Cuckoo Clock appeared; on balance MLM 's best-known children's story, and the last that she published as Ennis Graham, it was reprinted with her name in 1882.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

By 12 October 1911

MLM 's final book was the children's fairy-story volume Fairies Afield, with illustrations by Gertrude Demain Hammond .
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 135. Gale Research, 1994.
135: 228
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
509 (12 October 1911): 377

20 January 1921

MLM died at a little past eighty of heart failure, at her flat in Sloane Street in London.
Voller, Jack. “Mary Louisa Molesworth”. The Literary Gothic.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

29 May 1839

Mary Louisa Stewart (later MLM ) was born in Rotterdam (where her Scots parents were then living) into a family which eventually totalled six children.
Voller, Jack. “Mary Louisa Molesworth”. The Literary Gothic.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 135. Gale Research, 1994.
135: 231

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