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, 1946.
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...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
FHB
wrote The Two Little Pilgrims' Progress (whose title invokes Bunyan
and perhaps adapters of Bunyan like Mary Martha Sherwood
, Barbara Hofland
, and Charlotte Maria Tucker
), about the visit of orphan twins...
Textual Production
Naomi Royde-Smith
In an Author's NoteNRS
tenders her thanks to the shades of Miss Austen, Miss Burney
, Miss Edgeworth
, Mrs Sherwood
and Mr. W. M. Thackeray for the life-long pleasure they have given her...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Rigby
The second appeared in June 1844. This instalment (as Children's Books) considered works by Maria Edgeworth
, Mary Martha Sherwood
, and Mary Howitt
.
Lochhead, Marion C. Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake. John Murray, 1961.
46
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
1: 726
.
Textual Production
Charlotte Maria Tucker
An anonymous publisher in Stickney, South Dakota, put out an undated modern reprint.
“The A.L.O.E. (Charlotte Maria Tucker) Resource”. Peter and Rachel Reynolds: Used Christian Books.
Bunyan
, along with the Bible, was one of CMT
's primary literary influences. Whether or not she knew it, she...
Textual Production
Joan Aiken
Next year came The Smile of the Stranger, a historicalromance whose English heroine experiences not only the French Revolution (since she has been living with her father in France) but other markers of...
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
Textual Production
Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS
entitled her biography of Evangelical children's writer Mary Martha SherwoodThe State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood.
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.
She considers a wide range of journalists and memoirists, particularly the lesser-known writers, embarking on a recuperative effort. Her purpose in illuminating the literary, historical, and sociological significance of the journals and memoirs was to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Charlotte Yonge
CM's preface (dated March 1870) says that as a child she preferred the inherited books of the former generation to any moderns except Maria Edgeworth
.
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. A Storehouse of Stories. Macmillan, 1870–1872, 2 vols.
1: v
She mentions two imitations (by Mary Martha Sherwood
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Muriel Jaeger
She begins this book with a method not unlike that of Experimental Lives from Cato to George Sand. Her first chapter, Pioneers in Conversion, centres its topic on individuals, relating the sudden transformation...
