She was the most popular children's writer of her day. Her output was phenomenal. Between 1870 and 1911 Molesworth produced over a hundred books, family and fantasy stories for children from the nursery to young adulthood. Her literary vision of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century childhood is uniquely realist, and representative of middle-class attitudes. The Times obituary eulogized, ‘During not far short of half a century [she] has given happy thoughts to childhood. Mrs Molesworth's books have not been superseded, and very likely never will be.’ Salmon, a contemporary critic, called her ‘the best story-teller for children England has yet known'. ‘No-one ever did understand children like you,’ said her friend, the poet Swinburne. To understand the convolutions of any age, there can be no better introduction than the morals and mores inculcated into its young. There is no better insight into the manoeuvres of the Victorian mind than Molesworth's child novels. Here are the clashing modes of thought that underpinned the Victorian battle between convention and individuality, between self-development and self-sacrifice.

Molesworth presents a two-pronged ‘is’ and ‘ought’ approach to childhood. Her characters strive for an ideal, a middle-class haven-home made of mammas, papas, children and good behaviour. Beneath this golden veneer she reveals a gaping crack: the conflict between homage to the family and selffulfilment. To promote the happy family she analyses unhappy families. Her anarchic children are unhappy because they are unloved; her cure lies in parents and children controlling themselves. Molesworth understood but did not allow temper and frustration. Her own life contained tragedy, but she made her own luck, capitalizing on her determination and talent. In her books her hope of familial bliss is steeped in autobiographical sincerity, in which disillusion is recognized but hidden, while endeavour reigns triumphant. It encapsulates the nineteenth-century middle-class view of itself, and accounts for her half-century of now vanished popularity.

A CLOSED BOOK

Molesworth's life was composed of secrets. True to Victorian form, which swept irregularities under the carpet, hers were well concealed.