Mary Martha Sherwood
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Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood ((née Butt) (1775 - 1851) was an influential and prolific writer of children's books in nineteenth-century Britain, composing over 400 books, tracts, magazine articles and chapbooks. Among her books, many of which attained great popularity, are Susan Gray, Little Henry and his Bearer, The History of Henry Milner, and The Fairchild Family. The strong evangelical fervor in her early works inspired several generations of children's writers throughout the nineteenth century.
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[edit] Early Life and Childhood
Mary Butt was born in 1775 and she spent some of her most formative years in Lichfield surrounded by the eminent naturalist Erasmus Darwin, the educational reformer Richard Lovell Edgeworth, his daughter Maria Edgeworth who later became a famous writer in her own right, and the celebrated poet Anna Seward. While she experienced the intellectual stimulation of this group of gifted thinkers and writers, she was distressed by their lack of faith, calling Richard Lovell Edgeworth an "infidel."[1] Moreover, she judged Seward's actions as a female author harshly, writing in her autobiography years later that she would never model herself after a woman who wore a wig and accumulated male flatterers.[2]
Sherwood records in her diaries and in her autobiography that as a child she was imaginative and always making up stories, something that her father encouraged her to do. In fact, she "wrote" stories in her head before she could even write and begged her mother to write them down for her.[3] From the tone of her later books, one might expect Sherwood's life to have been grim, but when she describes it in her autobioraphy, it is filled with fairylands and endless play with her brother. She even makes the best of the "stocks" that she was forced to stand in all day while she was at her lessons.[4]
It is as Sherwood matures that her memories of her life become increasingly painful. She continuously comments in her autobiography that she was tall and ungainly for her age and was prone to hiding out in the woods with her doll to escape company.[5] But all was not gloomy. She seemed to greatly enjoy attending Madame St. Quentin's School for Girls at Reading Abbey. Only with the intrusion of the French Revolution (the school was run by French emigres) does her happy life collapse somewhat.
[edit] Marriage and India
It is clear that for Sherwood, her childhood was the happiest part of her life. When writing her autobiography, she spent over half of it describing her childhood. In 1803 she married Captain Henry Sherwood and began life as an army wife. For several years she followed her husband wherever he went in England, never having a settled home. When she and her husband left for India in 1805, she was forced to leave her first child, Mary, behind in England.
Sherwood's eleven-year stay in India was marred by the deaths of two of her children at very young ages (Henry and Lucy). Sherwood herself was seemingly continually ill and after the death of her son, Henry, she began to seriously consider Evangelical Christianity. The chaplain to the company, Mr. Parson, convinced her, she wrote, of her "human depravity" and her need for redemption.[6] She was further convinced by the ministry of the famous missionary Henry Martyn. For many years, this would be a strong theme in her works, particularly those written in India such as The Infant's Progress and Henry and his Bearer. She started several schools for the children at the camp and for the local Indian children. Sherwood adopted neglected or orphaned children from the camp as well, expanding her family several times. She also gives birth to several more children: Lucy Elizabeth, Emily, Henry Martyn (named after her missionary hero), and Sophia. In 1816, on the advice of doctors, she and her family returned to England; it was thought that none of her children could survive a tropical climate.[7]
[edit] Return to England
When Sherwood returns to England, she runs a school for eight years and writes hundreds of works, increasing her popularity in both the United States and Britain. Interestingly, after describing her life as a child and in India, Sherwood leaves off describing the last forty-odd years of her life. According to the editor of her autobiography, she was a retired, domestic woman, but certainly this view could be challenged when looking at her literary output alone.
[edit] Career
Sherwood's career broadly subdivides into three periods: 1) her romantic period (1795-1805), during which she wrote two sentimental novels; 2) her evangelical period (1810-c.1830), in which she produced her most popular and influential works; and 3) her post-evanglical period (c. 1830-1851).[8]
[edit] References
- ^ F. J. Harvey Darton, ed., The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood from the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood, (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., [1910]), 11.
- ^ Ibid, 82.
- ^ Ibid, 33.
- ^ Ibid, 34.
- ^ Ibid, 50.
- ^ Ibid, 303.
- ^ Ibid, 326-7.
- ^ M. Nancy Cutt, Mrs. Sherwood and her Books for Children, (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), x.
[edit] Further reading
Cutt, M. Nancy. Mrs. Sherwood and her Books for Children. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Darton, F. J. Harvey, ed. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood from the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood. London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., [1910].
Smith, Naomi Royde. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1946.
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19th-Century British Children's and Young Adults' Literature |
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