1832-1911
Children's author of great popularity; her real name was Sarah Smith and she was born in Wellington where her father was a bookseller and stationer in New Street. She was educated at a day school for girls run by Mrs. Cranage at the Old Hall in Watling Street and she read widely from among the books in her father's shop. From her mother she inherited deep religious feelings and convictions which were to colour her later writings. She began writing stories when quite young but was twenty-seven years old before she had anything published.
Her first success was due in part to her sister Elizabeth who sent Sarah's story The lucky leg to Charles Dickens who was then editing Household words. Dickens liked the story, paid Sarah £5 for it and asked for more. She became a regular contributor to the magazine as a result and a friend of Dickens. In 1858 she adopted the pseudonym Hesba Stretton; Hesba was made up from the initial letters of the names of her brothers and sisters while Stretton came from All Stretton which she had visited as a child and where her sister Anne owned a house called Caradoc Lodge. In 1863 Hesba and Elizabeth moved to Manchester then travelled abroad and eventually settled in London.
Her most successful and best loved book, Jessica's first prayer, was published in 1867. It first appeared in Sunday at home and was described as
"...a touching story, simply written, of a girl waif's first awakening to the meaning of religion".
In fact over one and a half million copies of the book were sold, a staggering total by any standard, and it was translated into many languages. Hesba Stretton's stories are all very moral, religious pieces which are too mawkish and sentimental for modern tastes but which were very much in tune with the times. In a memoir written for Sunday at Home a correspondent commented on the effect of Jessica's first prayer on himself and fellow sailors some years before:
Every word went right home to our hearts. . . all soft as they were, and I am sure if Miss Hesba Stretton had seen four rough young sailors choking red-eyed over the story. . . she would have been compelled to allow her eyes to overflow with sympathetic joy!
One cannot help but smile at testimonies such as this and wonder
if just possibly the sailors concerned were in a maudlin state as
a result of too much grog. But for all their moralising and
sentimentality, her stories do contain some good characterisation
and they did serve the laudable purpose of highlighting the
poverty and squalor of the many young waifs and strays among the
child population of the Victorian streets.
Between 1866 and 1906 Hesba Stretton had fifty volumes published, mostly short religious stories, by the Religious Tract Society. Of her full-length books further best sellers were Little Meg's children (1868) and Alone in London (1869). She was appalled at the plight of the country's thousands of impoverished children and, with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, helped to found what was later to become the N.S.P.C.C. From 1870 onwards she and Elizabeth lived in London, moving to their final home, Ivy Croft, Ham, near Richmond in 1890. Hesba died here in October 1911 after a long illness. The church of St. Lawrence in Church Stretton has a memorial window and plaque to Hesba Stretton.
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:-
Alone in London (1869)
Bede's charity
Carola.
Cassy
Children of Cloverley
(1865)
Cobwebs and cables
David Lloyd's last will
Enoch Roden's training
Fern's hollow
(1864)
Fishers of Derby Haven
Hester Morley's promise
(1899)
Highway of sorrow
In prison and out
(1880)
Jessica's first prayer
(1867)
Jessica's mother
King's servants
Little Meg's children
(1868)
The Lord's purse-bearers
Lost gip
Max Kromer - a story of the siege of Strasbourg
Mrs Burton's best bedroom and other stories
Night and a day
No place like
home.
Pilgrim street - a story of Manchester life (1872)
Sir Charles Danvers
Storm of life
Sweet story of old
Thorny path
Under the old roof.
The wonderful life of Christ
The full text of several of the works of Hesba Stretton can be read online on this website or downloaded free of charge. A full list of e-texts available appears on a separate page.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 3 September 2004
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