Flowers Of The Forest (1843)

Mary Martha Sherwood was a nineteenth-century English children's writer. The best-known of her more than four hundred writings are The History of Little Henry and His Bearer (1814), as well as the two volumes The History of Henry Milner (1822-1837) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818-1847). Her evangelicalism permeated her early writings, although her later works address popular Victorian subjects like domesticity. Mary Martha Butt married Captain Henry Sherwood and relocated to India for eleven years. She converted to evangelical Christianity, built schools for army commanders' children and indigenous Indian children, adopted abandoned or orphaned children, and established an orphanage. She was motivated to write literature for youngsters in military camps. Sherwood's career was divided into three periods: the romantic period (1795-1805), the evangelical period, during which she wrote her most popular and significant works, and the post-evangelical period. Her writing was characterized by "her conviction of inherent human corruption," her idea that literature "had a catechetical utility" for all levels of society, her opinion that "the dynamics of family life" should reflect basic Christian teachings, and her "virulent" anti-Catholicism. Sherwood's work has been described as "one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century". Her representations of domesticity and ties to India may have affected many young readers, but her work declined in popularity as children's literature expanded in the late nineteenth century.