Mary Martha Sherwood
English writer of children's literature
Died when: 76 years 139 days (916 months)Star Sign: Taurus
Mary Martha Sherwood (née Butt; 6 May 1775 – 22 September 1851) was a nineteenth-century English children's writer of more than four hundred works.
The best known include The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814), The History of Henry Milner (1822–1837), and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–1847).
Her evangelicalism permeated her early writings, but later works cover common Victorian themes such as domesticity.Mary Martha Butt married Captain Henry Sherwood and moved to India, converted to evangelical Christianity and began to write for children, with those of military encampments there in mind.
Her work was well received in Britain, where the Sherwoods returned after a decade.She opened a boarding school and published texts for children and the poor, as "one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century".
Her depictions of domesticity and ties with India may have influenced many young readers, but her work fell from favour as children's literature broadened in the late nineteenth century.
