A Christmas Child - Illustrated

A Christmas Child by Mrs Molesworth is a sketch of boy-life, or rather, though Ted grows to boyhood, of child-life; for it is the child that is the more vividly portrayed. And a very sweet, tenderly drawn sketch it is, with life and reality manifest throughout. Very few can rival Mrs Molesworth in the power of making us see the children of fancy; and in this Christmas Child something has given to her pen a special power. Source: The Pall Mall Budget, December 10, 1880.

Mary Louisa Molesworth, née Stewart (29 May 1839 20 January 1921) was an English writer of children's stories who wrote for children under the name of Mrs Molesworth. Her first novels, for adult readers, Lover and Husband (1869) to Cicely (1874), appeared under the pseudonym of Ennis Graham. Her name occasionally appears in print as M. L. S. Molesworth. She was born in Rotterdam, a daughter of Charles Augustus Stewart (18091873) who later became a rich merchant in Manchester and his wife Agnes Janet Wilson (18101883). Mary had three brothers and two sisters. She was educated in Great Britain and Switzerland: much of her girlhood was spent in Manchester. In 1861 she married Major R. Molesworth, nephew of Viscount Molesworth; they legally separated in 1879.

In the judgement of Roger Lancelyn Green: 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.

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

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