Maria Louisa Charlesworth

Maria Louisa Charlesworth (1 October 1819, The Rectory, Blakenham Parva – 6 January 1880, Nutfield, Surrey) was an English author of religious books.^[1]

Maria Charlesworth was the daughter of John Charlesworth (1782-1864), an Evangelical clergyman who was rector of Flowton when Maria was born and later rector of a London parish.^[2] A visitor in her father's parish from a young age, Maria Charlesworth drew on her experiences for The Female Visitor to the Poor (1846), as well as the fictionalised Ministering Children (1854). Ministering Children, set in a town modelled on Ipswich, sold over 170,000 copies during her lifetime – designed to teach children by example, it was especially popular as a 'reward book' for Sunday school prizes – and was translated into French, German and Swedish.^[3]

On her father's death in 1864 Maria Charlesworth lived for a while with her clergyman brother in Limehouse and then sent up a ragged school and a mission in Bermondsey.^[3] She retired to Nutfield in Surrey, where she died.^[4]

Works

• The Female Visitor to the Poor, 1846
• Ministering children, 1854
• Africa's Mountain Valley, 1865
• A Sequel to Ministering Children, 1867
• Oliver of the Mill, 1876
• The Old Looking-Glass; or Mrs. Dorothy Cope's Recollections of Service, 1877
• Sunday Afternoons in the Nursery, or Familiar Narratives from the Book of Genesis, 1885.

References

1. ^ Maria Charlesworth at FemBio
2. ^ Charlesworth, John in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
3. ^ ^{a b} 'Charlesworth, Maria Louisa', in Louise Shattock, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers, p. 99
4. ^ DNB

External links

• Works by or about Maria Louisa Charlesworth in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Charlesworth, Maria Louisa
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1 October 1819
Place of birth
Date of death	6 January 1880
Place of death