Mrs Molesworth

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Mrs Molesworth’

Mary Louisa Molesworth (née Stewart) (1839-1921) was an English novelist, born in Rotterdam but brought up in her parents’ home in Manchester (her father was a well-to-do merchant) with three bothers and two sisters. Initially, Molesworth published fiction for adult readers under the pseudonym of Ennis Graham, but Tell Me a Story (1875) marked a move into children’s literature, blending moral instruction with fantasy and sometimes the supernatural.

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The Old House Mrs Molesworth

In the opening lines of The Cuckoo Clock, Mrs Molesworth paints a word-picture of a house so old that Time itself seemed to have stopped.

The Cuckoo Clock (1877), a children’s story by Mrs Mary Louisa Molesworth (published under the pen-name of Ennis Graham), tells of a little girl named Griselda who is brought to live with her two aunts. There she becomes fascinated by a cuckoo clock upon which the happiness of the timeless old house is said to depend, and which proves to be a very unusual cuckoo clock indeed.

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