Mary Louisa Molesworth, néeStewart (29 May 1839 – 20 January 1921) was an English writer of children's stories who wrote for children under the name of Mrs Molesworth.[1] 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.[2]
Molesworth was born in Rotterdam, a daughter of Charles Augustus Stewart (1809–1873), who later became a rich merchant in Manchester, and his wife Agnes Janet Wilson (1810–1883). Mary had three brothers and two sisters. She was educated in Great Britain and Switzerland, and much of her girlhood was spent in Manchester. In 1861 she married Major R. Molesworth, nephew of Viscount Molesworth; they legally separated in 1879.[3] She lived for an early part of her marriage in Tabley Grange, outside Knutsford in Cheshire, rented from George, 2nd Lord de Tabley.[4]
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.[6]
Typical of the time, her young characters often use a lisping style, and words may be misspelt to represent children's speech—"jography" for geography, for instance.
She also took an interest in supernatural fiction. In 1888, she published a collection of supernatural tales under the title Four Ghost Stories, and in 1896 a similar collection of six tales under the title Uncanny Tales. In addition to those, her volume Studies and Stories includes a ghost story entitled "Old Gervais" and her Summer Stories for Boys and Girls includes "Not exactly a ghost story."[7][8]
A new edition of The Cuckoo Clock was published in 1914.
Agatha Christie mentions The Tapestry Room and Four Winds Farm in her novel Postern of Fate, as childhood favourites of her detectives Tommy and Tuppence.
InThe Whirling ShapesbyJoan North, Two Little Waifs by Mrs. Molesworth is mentioned as a book (Great-)Aunt Hilda was given by her father on her eighth birthday.
^Browning, D. C., comp. (1958) Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography; English & American. London: Dent; pp. 477-78
^Lancelyn Green, Roger (1961). Mrs Molesworth. London: Bodley Head. p. 25.
^Green, Roger Lancelyn, "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.
^One item in a prose column states, "A new novel by Mrs. Molesworth ("Ennis Graham"), the author of The Cuckoo Clock, &c., will be published in a few days ..." (The Academy, 23 Feb 1878, p. 166). One listing in "Hurst & Blackett's New Works", annotated "[8 March.", uses the same byline, "By ... &c." (The Spectator, 2 Mar 1878, p292).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Molesworth, Mary Louisa". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 660.
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