Maria Louisa Charlesworth


Maria Louisa Charlesworth was an English author of children's religious books and religious tracts.

Life

Maria Louisa Charlesworth was born 1 October 1819 at The Rectory, Blakenham Parva, Suffolk. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Charlesworth and the Revd. John Charlesworth B.D., an Evangelical clergyman, who was Rector of Flowton, Suffolk when Maria was born. He later became Rector of St Mildred's, Bread Street, a London parish where Maria lived with him in the Rectory, at St Nicholas Olave.
As a visitor to the poor in her father's parishes from a young age, Maria drew on these experiences for her first book, The Female Visitor to the Poor, as well as for her most popular publication, the fictionalised Ministering Children and its sequel published in 1867. Set in a town modelled on Ipswich, Ministering Children circulated over 300,000 copies during her lifetime and was designed to teach children by example. It was especially popular as a 'Reward Book' for Sunday School prizes and was also translated into French, German and Swedish.
On her father's death in 1864 Maria Charlesworth lived for a while with her brother, the Revd. Samuel Beddome Charlesworth, who was Rector of St Anne's, Limehouse. She established St Stephen's ragged school and a mission in Bermondsey.
In 1864 she retired to Nutfield in Surrey, where she lived at Church Hill House with her elderly mother who died in 1869.
She is credited with persuading the Reverend Francis Pocock, a former curate to the Bishop of Sierra Leone, to establish Monkton Combe School, near Bath, Somerset in 1868, to educate the sons of missionaries.
Maria died in Nutfield, Surrey, on Saturday 16 October 1880, aged 61 and was buried at St Peter & St Paul, Nutfield on 21 October 1880. Her brother conducted her burial service. She left an estate valued at almost £6000 with her brother as sole executor.

Selected works