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1775-1851
Children's author; born at Stanford-on-Teme near Worcester. The daughter of the Rev. George Butt and educated at home and at the Abbey School, Bath (a school which Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra had previously attended). Mary wrote, later in life, that she had had a happy childhood and that her father was very kind to her and yet recalled that from the age of six to thirteen he had forced her to wear a sort of iron collar with back boards over the shoulders to correct a slouch! Perhaps this experience helps to account for the macabre element which runs through her evangelical stories. While in Bath she had attended balls and social events and was considered a society beauty. She had been writing stories from childhood and delighted in reading anything that could spark her imagination.
In 1795 her father died suddenly and her life changed drastically. The family moved to Bridgnorth, to a somewhat uncomfortable house in the High Street and Mary now became caught up in fervent religious beliefs, perhaps due partly to her father's death and partly to separation from her beloved cousin Henry Sherwood. Mary and her sister Lucy began to teach at local Sunday schools and to write moral tales for children, which they had published. One of the first of these was Mary's History of Susan Gray (1802) which, according to the author, was intended for the instruction of village women and girls. In it Susan Gray resists every temptation thrown at her, whilst her acquaintance Charlotte Owen faces a downward path to death and damnation. Her squalid death is ponderously emphasised to show the inevitable fate of all who submit to life's temptations and the author quotes frequently and extensively from the nether reaches of the Bible to prove her point.
This was the first of many such moral tales for children and Mary was probably the most intense and didactic of all the children's writers during the nineteenth century, stressing always the inherent sinfulness of man (and child!). In 1803 she married Henry Sherwood who had returned from army service in the West Indies and she left Bridgnorth.
This marked the end of her direct link with Shropshire although an indirect one was maintained by the fact that many of her books were published by Houlston and Son of Market Square in Wellington, a firm of booksellers and printers which was prominent as one of the country's most prolific publishers of evangelical books and broadsheets. Shropshire has a strong evangelical tradition through Baxter, Fletcher and the visits of Wesley and the mining and ironworking districts of the Wellington and Coalbrookdale area were a hotbed of religious fervour. Houlstons was well placed therefore to exploit the production of religious books and they published poems and tracts by Patrick Bronte, Mrs. Sherwood herself, her sister Lucy (who became Lucy Cameron) and many others. Mrs. Sherwood accompanied her husband to India and threw herself into teaching and evangelical work, as well as continuing to write stories such as Little Henry and his bearer Boosy (1814) which was to prove one of her most popular works. She returned to England in 1816 and lived at Lower Wick, a village on the outskirts of Worcester.
In 1818 the first part of her History of the Fairchild family was published, a truly horrific book of moral instruction for children, which well illustrates the author's penchant for the morbid and macabre. Her later writings included The history of Henry Milner (1822-37) and Lady of the manor (1825-1829) which consisted of no less than seven volumes of "conversations on the subject of confirmation, intended for the use of the middle and higher ranks of young females". Heady stuff indeed; the lower ranks of young females presumably had to look elsewhere for their moral instruction though. Mrs. Sherwood's fame as an evangelical writer was so great that she was invited to meet William Wilberforce and Elizabeth Fry. However, in the latter part of her career she lost some of her fervour to become a precursor of the Victorian writers of domestic children's tales.
Adapted from An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire by Gordon Dickins, published by Shropshire Libraries, 1987. © Gordon Dickins, 1987.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
The history of John Marten
The history of Susan Gray (1802)
The history of the Fairchild family (1818)
The lady of the manor (1825-1829)
Little woodman and his dog Caesar
Moral and family tales
Little Henry and his bearer Boosy (1814)
The following complete texts are available on this website:-
The following links are to introductions to the individual stories contained within Moral and family tales:-
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updated 3 February 2005
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