Mary Martha Sherwood (née Butt) (1775–1851) was a prolific and highly popular children’s author; her works drew on her decade in India, her deep Evangelical Christian faith, her extensive teaching of young children, and her experience as a mother to a large family. Her most famous works include Little Henry and His Bearer (1814) and The History of the Fairchild Family (first volume first published in 1818). Sherwood emphasizes the moral lesson that human beings—including children—are inherently sinful, and that salvation therefore depends on submission to the Christian God and on divine mercy; even Sherwood’s most virtuous heroes acknowledge that they cannot fully merit Christ’s forgiveness and love. Critical reception has focused on how her children’s books provide evidence for a regression from Rousseauvian theories of childhood; however, the most recent criticism is increasingly attuned to the psychology of colonialism as evidenced in Sherwood’s work and to the more affectionate portraits of family life in her children’s books.