Mary Molesworth

Mary Molesworth - Four Ghost Stories

Mary Louisa Molesworth, née Stewart was born in Rotterdam, Holland on May 29th, 1839. She was educated in Great Britain and Switzerland with much of her early life spent in Manchester, where her Father had gained wealth as a merchant. In 1861 she married Major R. Molesworth but the marriage was to end in a legal separation in 1879. Mary wrote for adults with such works as Lover and Husband (1869) and Cicely (1874), appearing under her pseudonym of Ennis Graham. She is best known as the writer of books for older children such as Tell Me a Story (1875), Carrots (1876), The Cuckoo Clock (1877), The Tapestry Room (1879), and A Christmas Child (1880). She has been called "the Jane Austen of the nursery," and The Carved Lions (1895) is hailed as her masterpiece. Typical of the time, her young child characters often use a lisping style, and words may be misspelt to better represent a child-"jography" for geography. One of many authors at the time to experiment with supernatural fiction she published collections in 1888 and 1896. Mary Louisa Molesworth died on January 20th, 1921 and is buried at Brompton Cemetery in London.