An understanding of what has come to be called the golden age of children's literature, however, demands attention to her work; and her adult fiction, while less skillful than her children's books, comments in interesting ways on the middle-class view of the late-Victorian and Edwardian world.
Mary Louisa Stewart was born in Rotterdam, where she lived until about age two. Her parents, Agnes Janet Wilson Stewart and Charles Augustus Stewart were from Scotland. They settled in Manchester, where her father was involved in the shipping business, eventually becoming a senior partner in the firm of Robert Barbour Brothers. The family, including three sons and three daughters, lived in Manchester for twelve years and then in one of its suburbs for the next eight years.
Details of Molesworth's early life are sketchy. She began to write and tell stories at a young age, and in her teens she published some stories in periodicals. During Molesworth's yearly visits to Scotland, her grandmother Wilson filled her mind with stories; Molesworth credited her grandmother's talents as a storyteller with awakening her own. Other early influences on her fiction were her voracious reading and her experiences in school in Switzerland, which followed schooling at home by her mother and perhaps at a school in Manchester.
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