Mary Louisa Molesworth

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Mary Louisa Molesworth
Born 29 May 1839
Rotterdam
Died 22 December 1921
Pen name Ennis Graham
Occupation author
Writing period Victorian
Genres Children's literature
Subjects Morality

Mary Louisa Molesworth (29 May 1839 – 20 January 1921) was a Scottish writer.

She was the daughter of Major-General Stewart, of Strath, NB, and was born in Rotterdam.

She was educated in Great Britain and abroad. In 1861 Miss Stewart married Major R Molesworth. Her first novels, Lover and Husband (1869) to Cicely (1874), appeared under the pseudonym of "Ennis Graham."

"Mary Louisa Molesworth typified late Victorian writing for girls. Aimed at girls too old for fairies and princesses but too young for Austen and the Brontës, books by Molesworth had their share of amusement, but they also had a good deal of moral instruction. The girls reading Molesworth would grow up to be mothers; thus, the books emphasized Victorian notions of duty and self-sacrifice."

Typical of the time, her young child characters often use a lisping style, and words may be mis-spelt to represent children's speech—"jography" for geography, for instance.

Mrs Molesworth is best known as a writer of books for the young, such as Tell Me a Story (1875), Carrots (1876), The Cuckoo Clock (1877), The Tapestry Room (1879), and A Christmas Child (1880). She has been called "the Jane Austen of the nursery," while The Carved Lions (1895) "is probably her masterpiece."[1]

A new edition of The Cuckoo Clock was published in 1914.

She died in 1921 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

[edit] Biography

Mrs. Molesworth: A Biography by Jane Cooper (2002)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Roger Lancelyn Green, "The Golden Age of Children's Literature," in: Sheila Egoff, G. T. Stubbs, and L. F. Ashley, eds., Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, New York, Oxford University Press; second edition, 1980; pp. 9-10.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

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Nineteenth-century British children's literature
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