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Mary Martha Sherwood |
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It is unfortunate that Mary Martha Sherwood is chiefly remembered today for The History of the Fairchild Family (1818), a book that has become infamous in the late twentieth century for extended deathbed scenes, rotting corpses, and other grisly and disturbing details. She is less often remembered as the author of more than four hundred titles, ranging from lengthy multivolume books to tales, tracts, texts, chapbooks, reward books, and periodical articles. While some of her efforts have been considered mediocre and even unreadable by twentieth-century critics, she has been acknowledged as a writer of considerable ability. Caroline Mordaunt, or The Governess (1835) has been compared to the novels of Jane Austen, and Shanty the Blacksmith (1835) is highly regarded as an exciting Gothic tale. It would be a mistake to regard the History of the Fairchild Family as representative of Sherwood's literary style, religious philosophy, or attitudes toward childhood and child rearing.
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