Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Martha Sherwood
-
Standard Name: Sherwood, Mary Martha
Birth Name: Mary Martha Butt
Married Name: Mary Martha Sherwood
Indexed Name: Mrs Sherwood
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of The Traditions
MMSwrote and signed more than 350 books (mostly for children, but including several adult novels), and left almost a score of fat volumes of diary. Some of her children's books, despite their uncompromisingly hell-fire message, remained current for several generations and were vividly remembered by many impressionable children, some of whom grew up to be writers. Her former high repute as a children's writer is at least as well deserved for her autobiography and diary, and her biographer Naomi Royde-Smith
seriously admired some of her novels.
Royde-Smith, Naomi, and Denis Dighton. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. Macmillan.
Annie was an eager reader, and in a comparative dearth of children's books she read the educationalist Rollin
and the ancient historian Plutarch
at an early age.
It is probably Charles Rollin who is meant...
Education
Rudyard Kipling
Even during the years of the detested Southsea school RK
was developing an appreciation for literature. He writes of being surprised when reading (something Mrs Holloway
forced him to do under threat of punishment) turned...
Textual Production
Penelope Lively
PL
's Victorian children's story Fanny's Sister was contextualized by British Book News as resembling Mary Martha Sherwoodwithout the moralizing and approaching the larger-scale tales of Gillian Avery
.
British Book News. British Council.
(1977): 762
Intertextuality and Influence
Edna Lyall
In London they set about with inadequate command of the language to locate the cheapest possible lodgings, which they find in Pentonville. Here Espérance studies English from their landlady's scanty supply of pious books...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edna Lyall
The Burges children's father, though he is against Pusey
ism, is broad-minded
Lyall, Edna. The Burges Letters: A Record of Child Life in the Sixties. Longmans, Green, and Co.
33
about Puseyites as he is in other respects: visitors to their house include not only Anglicans
but Moravians
, a Baptist
...
Textual Features
Harriet Martineau
The stories are eventful as well as didactic (incidents range from natural disaster and piracy to child heroism and the death of a baby). They typically feature sudden adversity, which snatches children from a familiar...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Meteyard
This illustrated story of a young girl's childhood and education has some autobiographical elements (Howitt calls it her own early life),
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
188
including the profession of the army surgeon father of the eponymous character...
Education
Mary Russell Mitford
She spent several years at the boarding school
at 22 Hans Place in Chelsea, run by Monsieur de St Quintin or St Quentin
(who bailed her father out with money in some of his...
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Many of her later friends were at least a generation younger than she was. She met many members of the Clapham Sect
in the 1790s, of whom Henry Thornton
and his daughter Marianne
became particularly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Harriett Mozley
The month of the title is that of December, with Christmas in its midst. The story is one of family relationships among children: realistic, witty, and uncondescending. The issue of child nurture and education in...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. Nesbit
Wet Magic is a book full of legendary water creatures such as mermaids. It features a family of children tyrannised over by the unpleasant Aunt Enid (a contrast with other aunts whom EN
had presented...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Oliphant
The plot of the first novel concerns concealed family origin and loss of inheritance. Edgar Arden, brought up abroad, finds English social customs puzzling. MO
uses his visit to view a corpse as a means...
Mary Martha Sherwood
later recalled seeing everyone at a public assembly thrown into tears when the latter of these songs was sung.
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, p. xxxvii - lxx.
xliii
Education
Winifred Peck
From their nurse and the books read aloud by their governess rather than from their parents, the Knox children's religious education tended in the direction of bigotry, as mentioned above.
Peck, Winifred. A Little Learning; or, A Victorian Childhood. Faber and Faber.
