Molesworth, MRS

Molesworth, MRS (Mary Louisa Stewart), novelist and popular writer for the young, was born of Scotch parentage at Rotterdam, and her childhood was passed in Manchester and Scotland, and partly in Switzerland. She has since lived a good deal abroad. She began to write when very young, and her first attempts were published when she was only sixteen. She was most carefully educated under the superintendence of a very cultivated and accomplished mother, and she owed much to the instruction and direction of the Rev. William Gaskell, husband of the novelist, himself a perfect master of literary style. Her first complete works were written under the nom de plume of Ennis Graham, when she was about twenty-four. These were novels entitled Love and Husband, She was Young and He was Old, Not without Thorns, Cicely, and several years later Hathercourt Rectory and Miss Bouverie. When she was about thirty she began to write for children and was at once successful, and has since held foremost rank in this department. Her children are invariably natural and childlike, they think, speak, and act like real children, and she has command of an easy and graceful flow of language, which carries the reader pleasantly onward. Her children's stories, which now number more than two dozen volumes, include Tell Me a Story (1875), Carrots (1876), Tapestry Room (1879), Herr Baby (1881), Rectory Children (1890), The Green Casket (1890), Children of the Castle (1890). She has also contributed largely to the better class juvenile magazines.