Mrs. Sherwood; [Sherwood, Mary Martha]. The Orphans of Normandy, or Florentin and Lucie. Hartford: D. F. Robinson & Co., 1827. First American Edition. [11997]
Red leather spine with plain boards, front joint cracked with the front cover nearly detached, 5 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches. Fine wood-engraved frontispiece of a scene from the story, 106 pages, tight. Medium to dark foxing throughout. Fair. Hardcover.
A story set during the French Revolution in which the religion of Protestant Calvinism is taught and presented as the means of salvation for young persons left orphaned by the conflict.
Mary Martha Sherwood (née Butt, 1775-1851), b. Stanford-on-Teme, England; d London, England. She was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and the wife of a Captain of British Infantryman, whom she accompanied on his eleven-year assignment to India. While in India she was influenced by the missionary Henry Martyn and converted to an evangelical Christian faith. She began her own ministry to children in India, writing books for their use, founding schools and an orphanage. In 1816 she returned to England to recover her heath, opened a school, and began writing a series of popular evangelical stories for children. She is credited with writing more than four hundred works.
