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Mary Martha Sherwood
Mary Martha Sherwood
Born	May 6, 1775 Stanford, Worcestershire
Died	September 22, 1851 Twickenham, England
Occupation	writer
Nationality	British

Mary Martha Sherwood (née Butt) (May 6, 1775 - September 22, 1851) was an influential and prolific writer of children's literature in nineteenth-century Britain. Sherwood composed over 400 books, tracts, magazine articles and chapbooks; among the most famous are The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814), The History of Henry Milner (1822-37), and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818-47). While she is primarily known for the strong evangelical tone which infused her early writings, over time more mainstream Victorian concerns came to dominate her works.

Sherwood led a relatively uneventful life until she married Captain Henry Sherwood and moved to India. It was there that she converted to evangelical Christianity and began to write extensively for children. Her writings, originally intended for the children of the military encampments in India, were enthusiastically received in Britain as well. After spending a decade in India, the Sherwoods returned to England where they established two boarding schools. Sherwood continued to write scores of texts and also began to edit several children's periodicals.

Many of Sherwood's books were bestsellers during her lifetime, and some scholars have claimed that it was her depictions of domesticity and Britain's relationship with India that defined the Victorian era for many young British readers; for this, she has been called "one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century." However, by the end of the century her works had fallen from favor, as a different style of children's literature came into fashion.

Early life

Sherwood was born on 6 May 1775, in Stanford, Worcestershire. She was the oldest daughter and second child of Martha Butt and Reverend George Butt, the chaplain in ordinary to George III. In her autobiography, Sherwood describes herself as an imaginative and playful child. She composed stories in her head even before she could write and begged her mother to write them down for her. When she was seventeen, her father, who encouraged her writing, helped her publish her first story, Traditions (1794). Sherwood remembered her childhood as a delightful time filled with exciting "adventures" undertaken by her brother and herself. She even makes the best of the "stocks" that she was forced to stand in all day while she did her lessons. For a nineteenth-century girl, Sherwood's education was particularly wide-ranging; she learned Latin and Greek and was allowed read freely in her father's library.

Sherwood's life became more painful as she matured. She comments, for example, in her autobiography that she was tall and ungainly for her age. Apparently, she used to hide in the woods with her doll to escape visitors to her parents' home. But all was not gloomy. She seemed to greatly enjoy attending Madame St. Quentin's School for Girls at Reading Abbey, the same school Jane Austen had attended. It is only with the intrusion of the French Revolution (the school was run by French emigres) that her happy life somewhat collapsed, according to her autobiography.

Sherwood spent some of her most formative teenage 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 accepted the intellectual stimulation of this group of gifted thinkers and writers, she was distressed by their lack of faith, later calling Richard Edgeworth an "infidel." Moreover, she judged Seward's persona of the 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.

When Sherwood's father died in 1795, she, her mother and her siblings retired from their active social life and moved to Bridgnorth, Shropshire; her mother preferred a quiet life of "almost complete retirement." Here Sherwood started writing sentimental novels; in 1802 she sold Margarita for £40 to Mr. Hazard of Bath, and The History Susan Grey, Pamela-like novel, for £10. Sherwood also began teaching at a local Sunday school.

Marriage and India

It is clear that according to Sherwood's memories, her childhood was the happiest part of her life; she spends over half of her autobiography reflecting on it. The majority of the remaining text is dedicated to the early years of her marriage, particularly those years she spent in India. On 30 June 1803 she married her cousin (a common practice in the eighteenth century) Captain Henry Sherwood (1776-1849) and began life as an army wife. For several years she followed her husband and the 53rd Foot Regiment wherever they went in Britain, never having a settled home. In 1804, Capt. Sherwood was given the position of paymaster which slightly improved the couple's financial position. When the regiment was ordered to India in 1805, the couple was forced to leave their first child, Mary, behind with Sherwood's mother and sister.

Sherwood's four-month trip to India was difficult; she was pregnant again and the ship was attacked by French warships during the journey. The Sherwoods stayed in India for eleven years, moving with the army and an ever-increasing family from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Dinapore (Danapur) to Berhampore (Baharampur) to Cawnpore (Kanpur) to Meerut (Meerut). Sherwood gave birth to six children in India, but only four survived past infancy—Lucy Elizabeth, Emily, Henry Martyn, and Sophia. Sherwood reports in her autobiography that she was continually ill in India and after the death of her son, Henry (not Henry Martyn), she began to seriously consider becoming an evangelical Christian. The deaths of these children affected her quite deeply; she frequently names the heroes and heroines in her books (many of whom die) after her own dead children. The chaplain to the company, Mr. Parson, convinced her, she wrote, of her "human depravity" and her need for redemption. She was finally convinced by the ministry of the famous missionary Henry Martyn.

After her conversion, Sherwood wished to embark on several different evangelical activities in India, but she first had to convince the East India Company that their policy of religious neutrality was ill-conceived. Sherwood seems to have entered the fray at the right time; religious winds were shifting in Britain—there was social and political support for missionary programs to India and the Company finally approved her programs. She established schools both for the children of the the army officers and for the local Indian children attached to the camp. Teaching often took place in her home since no buildings were available. Her first school began with 13 children but ended with over 40. While Sherwood initially envisioned it as a school for young children, the pupils ranged in age from the very young to adolescents and even sometimes included uneducated soldiers. Sherwood discovered that the traditional British teaching materials with which she was familiar did not transfer well into an Indian environment, so she wrote her own textbooks and stories replete with Indian and army themes. (The next writer to attempt this was Rudyard Kipling in the 1880s.) Two of the most famous of Sherwood's colonial works are The Indian Pilgrim (1818) and The History of Henry and his Bearer (1814). Sherwood also adopted neglected or orphaned children from the camp, expanding her family several times; in 1807 she adopted Annie Child, a three-year-old who had been given too much medicinal gin and in 1808 she rescued a malnourished two-year-old Sally Pownal. She found homes for those she could not adopt and even established an orphanage. In 1816, on the advice of doctors, she and her family returned to Britain; it was believed at the time that none of her children could survive in a tropical climate.

Return to Britain and death

When the Sherwoods returned to Britain the family was short on money so Sherwood decided to establish a boarding school for girls in Wick, Worcestershire, relying on her teaching experience in India to guide her. She taught English, French, astronomy, history, geography, grammar, writing and arithmetic. The school remained in operation for eight years. Captain Sherwood, receiving only half pay from the military, also opened a school in Henwick, Worcestershire. At the same time as Sherwood was running her school, she also wrote hundreds of tracts, novels and other works, increasing her popularity in both the United States and Britain. The History of Henry Milner, the first part of which was published in 1822, was one of Sherwood's most successful books; in fact, children sent her fan mail, begging her to write a sequel—one even sent her "ornamental pens" with which to do so. Babies were named after the hero. Sherwood also embarked on a large and complex Old Testament project which required her to learn Hebrew. To assist her, her husband worked on assembling a Hebrew-English concordance for over ten years.

By the 1830s the Sherwoods had become slightly more prosperous and they decided to travel to Europe. The texts that Sherwood wrote after this trip reflect her exposure to French culture in particular. Although Sherwood's autobiography provides extensive descriptions of her childhood and her early married life in India, it offers very few details regarding the last forty-odd years of her life. Even into her seventies, Sherwood continued to write four and five hours a day, but many of the books published in these later years were co-authored by Sherwood and her daughter, Sophia. According to M. Nancy Cutt, a Sherwood scholar, one result of this joint authorship was a "watery sentimentality" not evident in Sherwood's other works as well as an increased interest issues related to class. In 1849 the Sherwoods moved to Twickenham, Middlesex; Captain Sherwood died in December of that year and Sherwood herself died shortly thereafter, on 20 September 1851.

Literary analysis

According to M. Nancy Cutt, the only scholar to have written a book on Sherwood, Sherwood's career can be subdivided into three broad periods: 1) her romantic period (1795-1805), during which she wrote a few sentimental novels; 2) her evangelical period (1810-c.1830), during which she produced her most popular and influential works; and 3) her post-evangelical period (c. 1830-1851). Several dominant themes pervade Sherwood's works throughout almost all of these periods: "her conviction of inherent human corruption"; her belief that literature "had a catechetical utlity" for every rank of society; her belief that "the dynamics of family life" should mirror the central Christian principles; and her "virulent" anti-Catholicism.

Literary influences

Although Sherwood may have disagreed with the principles of the French Revolution, that did not stop her from modelling her own works on French children's literature, much of which was infused with Rousseauvian ideals. For example, The Lady of the Manor (1823-9) has a similar structure to Madame de Genlis' Tales of the Castle; it employs the maternal storyteller structure and it even contains some similar themes. Sherwood also copied Arnaud Berquin's "habitual pattern of small domestic situations acted out by children under the eye of parents or fellows"; scenes in The History of Henry Milner, Part I (1822) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818) closely resemble those from Berquin's books.

One of Sherwood's aims in The History of Henry Milner (1822-37) was to challenge what she saw as the insidious effects of French pedagogical theory. It was written in response in to Thomas Day's The History of Sandford and Merton (1783-9) which used as its basis the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose writings Sherwood had lambasted as "the well-spring of infidelity." But as Janis Dawson points out, the structure and emphasis of Henry greatly resemble much of Rousseau's Emile; their pedagogies are very similar, even if their underlying philosophies regarding childhood are not. Both books isolate the child to teach it and highlight the importance of learning from the natural world. The important difference is that Sherwood's Henry is naturally depraved while Rousseau's Emile is naturally good.

Sentimental novels

Sherwood's early works, The Traditions (1795) and Margarita (1795) are more worldly than her later works; these sentimental novels were her first forays as a published author. But it was with The History of Susan Gray, which was originally written for the girls of her Sunday school class, that she arrived as a popular author. Like Hannah More's tracts, it was designed to teach middle-class morality to the poor. Its popularity caused other publishers to pirate it. In 1816, Sherwood published a revised and "improved" version which Sarah Trimmer positively reviewed in her Guardian of Education. A companion story, The History of Lucy Clare was published in 1810.

Evangelicalism

One of the strongest themes running throughout Sherwood's early writings is "human depravity" and the "preparation for eternity." For Sherwood, the most important lessons are those that emphasize "faith, resignation, and implicit obedience to the will of God." In The Infant's Progress (1821), for example, her second adaptation of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, original sin is presented in the form of a child named "In-bred Sin" who tempts his fellow young pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City (heaven); it is the pilgrims' battle with In-bred Sin that forms the major conflict of the text. Such religious allegory, although not always so overt, continued to be a favorite literary device of Sherwood's throughout her literary career. But Dawson suggests that "some young readers may have found activities more interesting than the spiritual struggles of the little heroes, reading the book as an adventure story rather than as a guide to salvation."

Sherwood also infused her works with political and social messages that were vital to evangelicals at the time, such as the high priority that should be placed on missions, the value of charity, the evils of slavery and the importance of Sabbath observance. She wrote introductions to areas of knowledge such as astronomy and ancient history that were based on the Bible so that children would have properly Christian textbooks. As Cutt argues, "the intent of these (as indeed of all Evangelical texts) was to offset the deistical tendency to consider knowledge an end in itself." She also revised classic children's books to make them more appropriately religious, such as Sarah Fielding's The Governess. But her efforts to make religion more palatable by writing children's fiction were not always amenable to the entire evangelical community. The Evangelical Magazine harshly reviewed her Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817), complaining that it relied too much on exciting fictional tales to convey its religious message.

The History of the Fairchild Family

As Cutt argues, "the great overriding metaphor of all work is the representation of divine order by the harmonious family relationship (inevitably set in its own pastoral Eden). . . No writer made it clearer to her readers that the child who is dutiful within his family is blessed in the sight of God; or stressed more firmly that family bonds are but the earthly and visible end of a spiritual bond running up to the very throne of God." Nowhere is this theme more evident than in Sherwood's The History of the Fairchild Family, the first part of which was published in 1818.

Of all of Sherwood's evangelically-themed books, The History of the Fairchild Family was the most popular. When Sherwood published it with John Hatchard of Piccadilly, she assured it and the ten other books she published with him a "social distinction" not attached to her other publications. Hatchard was associated with the Clapham Sect of evangelicals, which included Hannah More, and his customers included wealthy businessmen, gentry, and Members of Parliament. The Fairchild Family tells the story of a family striving towards godliness. The text is a series of lessons taught by the Fairchild parents to their children regarding not only the proper orientation of their souls towards Heaven but also the proper etiquette for every social occasion. Like many of its eighteenth-century predecessors, the text incorporates inset tales in order to illustrate moral lessons, such as those of Charles Trueman and Miss Augusta Noble. Both of these neighborhood children die and the Fairchild children hear the stories of their deaths in order to better understand how to prepare their own hearts for salvation. Charles, who has a transcendent death much like Charles Dickens' Little Nell after him, was presumably saved while Augusta, who burned up because she would not heed her parents' warnings, was presumably damned. As Cutt explains, Sherwood's stories explain "the consequences of sin, expounding its spiritual dangers in gripping detail." Part I of the Fairchild Family is dominated by the theme of original sin, or as Sherwood expresses it, "human depravity." In order to overcome their innate "human depravity," the Fairchild children must have a conversion experience. Unlike previous literature with these themes, such as John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which relied strictly on allegory, Sherwood domesticated her story—actions in the children's day-to-day lives are of supreme importance because they relate directly to their salvation. Sherwood's text also includes prayers after every chapter that are thematically tied to the chapter's events as well as hymns by Philip Doddridge, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper and Ann and Jane Taylor, among others.

The Fairchild Family continued to be popular despite the emerging Wordsworthian view of childhood innocence and the sentimental picture of childhood drawn by authors such as Dickens in novels such as Oliver Twist; it remained in print until 1913. Even though the book was popular, it is important to consider how it was read. Some scraps of evidence have survived that reveal readers had a broad range of reactions to the text and that they did not always read it for its transparent message. In the middle of the century, for example, Lord Frederick Hamilton wrote that "there was plenty about eating and drinking; one could always skip the prayers, and there were three or four very brightly written accounts of funerals in it." Although The Fairchild Family has gained a reputation in the twentieth-century as an oppressively didactic book, in the early nineteenth century, according to Cutt, the book was viewed as having "the vitality and texture of real life." It was often described as humorous and Charlotte Yonge, a critic who also wrote children's literature, commented on "the gusto with which dwells on new dolls" and "the absolutely sensational naughtiness of Henry, Lucy, and Emily." Cutt states that Sherwood's "influence upon the domestic pattern of Victorian life can hardly be overestimated." Although twentieth-century critics have tended to view the tale as harsh, often pointing to the Fairchilds' visit to a gibbet with a rotting corpse on it, Cutt in turn points to the strong depiction of the nuclear family in the text, particularly Sherwood's emphasis on parents' responsibility to educate their own children.

The Fairchild Family was so popular that Sherwood wrote two sequels, one in 1842 and one in 1847. These reflected her changing values as well as those of the Victorian period. For example, the servants in Part I, "who are almost part of the family, are pushed aside in Part III by their gossiping, flattering counterparts in the fine manor-house." But perhaps the most extensive thematic change in the books was Sherwood's elimination of her strident evangelicalism. Whereas all of the lessons in Part I highlight the children's "human depravity" and encourage the reader to think in terms of the afterlife, in Parts II and III, other Victorian values such as "respectability" and filial obedience come to the fore. Dawson describes the difference as one of parental indulgence; in parts II and III, the Fairchild parents are less harsh in their discipline than in part I. Also, when the volumes were republished later in the century, they were severely edited. Often, for example, Mr. Fairchild's sermons were removed from Part I and the phrase "human depravity" was replaced with the word "naughtiness." Many of the changes also served to further emphasize the authority of the parents; "as the religious framework was weakened or removed, the parent became the ultimate authority, and the Victorian cult of the family was reinforced in a way that Mrs. Sherwood had never intended."

Tracts

Sherwood's tracts, which were published mainly for the poor, also "taught the lessons of personal endurance, reliance on Providence, and acceptance of one's earthly status." They emphasized personal experience and encouraged readers to connect their successes and failures either to themselves or to God rather than to "larger economic and political forces." In this, they resembled the Cheap Repository Tracts, many of which were written by Hannah More. As Linda Peterson argues, tracts such as Sherwood's A Drive in the Coach through the Streets of London, use a biblical "interpretative frame"' to highlight mortality and the fleetingness of possessions.

Anti-catholicism

Sherwood's vigorous anti-catholicism appears most obviously in her works from the 1820s and 1830s. During the 1820s in Britain, Catholics were agitating for greater civil rights and it was at this time that Sherwood wrote her most sustained attacks against them. When the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829, Sherwood and many like her were frightened of the influence that Catholics might have in the government. In response to these events, she wrote Victoria (1833), The Nun (1833) and The Monk of Cimies (1834) in order to show some of the dangers of Catholicism. But evangelicals were not all in agreement on these issues and some were uncomfortable with these books; one evangelical reviewer called The Monk of Cimies "unfair and unconvincing."

Colonialism

While in India, Sherwood wrote a series of texts based on colonial life. For example, The History of Henry and his Bearer (1814) tells the story of a young British boy who, on his deathbed, converts Boosy, the Indian man who has taken care of him throughout his childhood. The book was enormously successful; it reached 37 editions by 1850 and was translated into French, German, Spanish, Hindustani, Chinese, and Sinhalese within Sherwood's lifetime. Sherwood's tale consists of a blend of the sentimental, with its "idealized child figure," with the realistic. Sherwood introduced her readers to Hindustani words and descriptions of what she felt was authentic Indian life. As Cutt explains, "with this work, the obituary tract (which invariably stressed conversion and a Christian death) had assumed the colouring of romance." Sherwood also wrote a companion story entitled Little Lucy and her Dhaye (1825) that told a similar story from a little British girl's perspective.

Sherwood also tried to adapt Pilgrim's Progress for the Indian context; the text, The Indian Pilgrim (1818) focused on "the supposed depravity and pagan idolatry of Brahmans, fakirs, nautch (dance) girls, and soldiers' temporary wives." In many ways, this text demonstrates Sherwood's religious biases. As Dawson points out, "Muslims and Jews receive better treatment than Hindus because of their belief in one God, but Roman Catholics fare little better than the Hindu idolaters." This book was never published in India, but was very popular in Britain and America. Sherwood also wrote texts for Indian servants of British families in India in the style of British writings for the poor. One of these was The Ayah and Lady (1813; 1816) in which the ayah, or maid, is "portrayed as sly, self, lazy, and untrustworthy. Her employers are well aware of her faults, yet they tolerate her." A more culturally sensitive portrayal of Indians appears in The Last Days of Boosy (1842), a sequel to The History of Henry and his Bearer, in which the converted Boosy is cast out of his family and community because of his Christianity.

Indian settings and characters and colonial themes were a constant thread in Sherwood's texts, even after she left India: The History of Henry Milner (1822), its sequel John Marten (1844), and The Indian Orphans (1839) all evince this ongoing interest of Sherwood's. Sherwood's writings on India reveal that she had a strong sense of European, if not specifically British, superiority; her experiences in India appear to have reinforced these convictions. India appears in her works as a morally corrupt land in need of reformation. Thus, she wrote The History of George Desmond (1821) in order to warn young men who were thinking of emigrating to India of the dangers there. Sherwood's books shaped the minds of several generations of young Britons. According to Cutt, these were some of the rare depictions of India available to them and the children "acquired a strong conviction of the rightness of missions, which, while it inculcated sincere concern for, and a genuine kindness towards an alien people for whom Britain was responsible, quite destroyed any latent respect for Indian tradition." Cutt attributes the growing paternalism in British polices towards India in part to the wide-spread popularity of Sherwood's books.

In her more recent article on Sherwood, Nandini Bhattacharya, in an analysis that relies on postcolonial theory, has emphasized the complex relationship between Sherwood's evangelicalism and her colonialism. She argues that Sherwood's evangelical stories demonstrate the deep colonial "mistrust of feminized agency," in this case a dying child. Figures such as Henry in The History of Henry and his Bearer "subvert the colonialist's fantasy of universal identity by generating a subaltern identity that mimics and explodes that fantasy." But, ultimately, Bhattacharya argues, Sherwood creates neither a completely colonialist text nor a subaltern text; the death of children such as Henry cuts off any possibility for their consciousnesses to mature.

Victorianism

By 1830, Sherwood's works had drifted away from evangelicalism; her novels and stories reflected more conventional Victorian plots and themes. For example, Gipsy Babes (1826), perhaps inspired by Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, emphasizes "human affections" but also avoids, according to Cutt, stereotyping gypsies. In 1835, she published a Gothic novel for adolescents entitled Shanty the Blacksmith; it employs the tropes of the genre—"lost heir, ruined castle, humble helpers and faithful retainer, sinister and myserious gipsies, prisoner and plot" in what Cutt calls "a gripping" and "exciting tale." In Caroline Mordaunt (1835), a novel about a down-on-her-luck governess, Cutt suggests that Sherwood drew on the works of Jane Austen and Jane Taylor for a new "lively, humorous, and satirical strain" in her work. These works as well as her earlier evangelical works helped inscribe Victorian gender roles as well. In the Fairchild Family, for example, Lucy and Emily learn to sew and keep house while Henry tends the garden outside and learns Latin.

Legacy

As Britain's education system became more secularized in the second half of the nineteenth century, Sherwood's evangelical books were used mainly used to teach the poor and in Sunday schools. It was thus her missionary stories that were the most influential of all her texts. According to Cutt, "these stories, which in themselves kept alive the missionary spirit and perpetuated that paternal attitude towards India that lasted into the century, were widely imitated" and "an unfortunate assumption of racial superiority was fostered by the over-simplification of some of Mrs. Sherwood's successors." They influenced Charlotte Maria Tucker ("A.L.O.E.") and even perhaps Rudyard Kipling. In America, Sherwood's early works were extremely popular as well and were continually republished well into the 1840s; after that point, a tradition of specifically American children's literature began to develop with authors such as Louisa May Alcott.

Sherwood was also instrumental in developing the ideology of the Victorian family. Cutt acknowledges that "the omniscient Victorian parent was not the creation of Mrs. Sherwood, but of the Victorians themselves; nevertheless, by presenting the parent as God's vicar in the family, she had planted and fostered the idea." This is turn increased the value placed on childhood innocence, a theme emphasized in her later works rather than in her earlier works.

Although the prevalence of death in Sherwood's early stories and her vivid portrayal of its worldly and otherworldly consequences have often caused twentieth-century critics to deride her works, Sherwood's stories prepared the literary ground for writers such as Charles Kingsley and Charlotte Yonge, although these writers disagreed with her theology and her politics. Her narrative experiments with a variety of genres allowed other writers to pursue even more adventurous and experimental forms of fiction in nineteenth-century children's literature. Furthermore, her imaginative use of tract literature also encouraged radical writers such as Harriet Martineau to employ the same genre but to different ends. As Dawson writes, "though books are no longer widely read, she is regarded as one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century."

Selected works

This is a list of some of Sherwood's most influential works. For a more complete list that includes her many chapbooks and religious tracts, see the list of works by Mary Martha Sherwood.

• The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814)
• The History of Susan Gray (1815) (revised)
• Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817)
• The History of the Fairchild Family, Part I (1818)
• The Indian Pilgrim (1818)
• An Introduction to Geography (1818)
• The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1820)
• The History of George Desmond (1821)
• The Infant's Progress from the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory (1821)
• The History of Henry Milner, Part I (1822)
• The History of Little Lucy and her Dhaye (1823)
• The Lady of the Manor (1823-9)
• The Nun (1833)
• Caroline Mordaunt, or The Governess (1835)
• Shanty the Blacksmith (1835)
• The Last Days of Boosy, the Bearer of Little Henry (1842)
• The Youth's Magazine (1822-48) - "This periodical . . . brought out tales, tracts, and articles by mrs. Sherwood for over twenty-five years (signed at first M.M., and after 1827, M.M.S.) The earlier tales were rapidly reprinted by Houlston, Darton, Melrose, Knight and Lacey and the R.T.S. , as well as by various American publishers."
• The Works of Mrs. Sherwood by Harper & Bros. (1834-57) - most complete collected works

Notes

1. Dawson, Janis. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 163: 281.
2. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, M. Nancy. Mrs. Sherwood and her Books for Children. London: Oxford University Press (1974), 1; Dawson, 271.
3. 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. (), 33.
4. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 272.
5. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 34; Patricia Demers, "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 271.
6. Dawson, 271.
7. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 50.
8. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, 1; Dawson, 271.
9. Smith, Naomi Royde. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. (1946), 2-3.
10. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 11.
11. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 82.
12. Cutt, 2; Dawson, 272.
13. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, 2.
14. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, 2; Dawson, 272.
15. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 272.
16. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 273.
17. Demers, Patricial. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
18. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 303.
19. Cutt, 13; Dawson, 273.
20. Dawson, 273.
21. Cutt, 14-6; Dawson, 273-5.
22. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
23. Cutt, 18.
24. Cutt, 18.
25. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, 326-7.
26. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, 4; Dawson, 277-8.
27. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 278.
28. Smith, 62.
29. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Dawson, 280.
30. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
31. Cutt, 92-3.
32. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007; Cutt, 5.
33. Cutt, x.
34. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
35. Cutt, 43.
36. Cutt, 43.
37. Qtd. in Dawson, 278.
38. Dawson, 278.
39. Dawson, 272.
40. Cutt, 38.
41. Cutt, 38.
42. Cutt, 38.
43. Cutt, 38.
44. Dawson, 274.
45. Cutt, 38.
46. Cutt, 39.
47. Cutt, 39.
48. Cutt, 86.
49. Cutt, 41.
50. Cutt, 60.
51. Cutt, 64-5.
52. Cutt, 66.
53. Cutt, 66.
54. Cutt, 77.
55. Cutt, 66.
56. Qtd. in Cutt, 67.
57. Dawson, 270.
58. Cutt, 67.
59. Qtd. in Dawson, 277.
60. Cutt, 41.
61. Cutt, 68.
62. Cutt, 60.
63. Cutt, 76.
64. Dawson, 277.
65. Cutt, 80.
66. Peterson, Linda H. "From French Revolution to English Reform: Hannah More, Harriet Martineau, and the 'Little Book.'" Nineteenth-Century Literature 60.4 (2006), 416-7.
67. Peterson 417.
68. Peterson, 421.
69. Qtd. in Dawson, 278.
70. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
71. Cutt, 17-18.
72. Cutt, 18.
73. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
74. Dawson, 274.
75. Dawson, 274.
76. Dawson, 275.
77. Dawson, 275.
78. Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007.
79. Cutt, 20; Dawson, 273.
80. Cutt, 21.
81. Bhattacharya, Nandini. “Maternal Plots, Colonialist Fictions: Colonial Pedagogy in Mary Martha Sherwood’s Children’s Stories.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 23 (2001), 383.
82. Cutt, 87.
83. Cutt, 89.
84. Cutt, 90.
85. Dawson, 277.
86. Cutt, 97.
87. Dawson, 280.
88. Dawson, 271; 275.
89. Cutt, 98.
90. Dawson, 270.
91. Cutt, 99.
92. Peterson, 416ff.
93. Dawson, 280-1.
94. Cutt, 144.

Bibliography

There is no good biography of Sherwood; most of the biographical details in Cutt, Dawson, Demers and Smith are simply taken from Sherwood's own autobiography which is itself a confusing compilation of her manuscript, some diary entries and some sections added by a later editor.

• Bhattacharya, Nandini. “Maternal Plots, Colonialist Fictions: Colonial Pedagogy in Mary Martha Sherwood’s Children’s Stories.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 23 (2001): 381-415.
• Cutt, M. Nancy. Mrs. Sherwood and her Books for Children. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. ISBN 0192780107
• 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., . No ISBN available.
• Dawson, Janis. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 163: 267-281.
• Demers, Patricia. "Mary Martha Sherwood." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 April 2007. (by subscription only)
• Demers, Patricia. "Mrs Sherwood and Hesba Stretton: the letter and spirit of evangelical writing for children." Romanticism and Children's Literature in Nineteenth-century England. Ed. J. H. McGavran. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
• Gilchrist, Isabella, ed. The life of Mrs Sherwood. London: Robert Sutton, 1907. No ISBN available.
• Rosman, Doreen. Evangelicals and Culture. London: Croom Helm, 1984.
• Smith, Naomi Royde. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1946. No ISBN available.
• Vallone, Lynne. "'A humble Spirit under Correction': Tracts, Hymns, and the Ideology of Evangelical Fiction for Children, 1780-1820." The Lion and the Unicorn 15 (1991) 72-95.

External links

• History of the Fairchild Family Part I (1818)
• The Lady of the Manor (1825-29)
• Père la Chaise (1823)
• Arzoomund (1829, 2nd edition)
• The Indian Pilgrim (1858 edition)
• The History of the Fairchild Family, Part III (1847)
• The Little Woodman and his Dog Cæsar and the Orphan Boy (1860 edition)
• The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1816, 7th edition)
• The Infant's Progress (1821, 2nd edition)

• 1775 births
• 1851 deaths
• People from Worcestershire
• 19th century British children's literature
• English novelists
• Women novelists
• English women writers
• Women writers (19th century)
• English religious writers