Writings
Dorothy Kilner published anonymously at first and then under the successive pseudonyms of M. P. and Mary Pelham, in line with general practice for female authors in that period. "M. P." may have referred to her home town of Maryland Point. Both she and her sister-in-law were published by the London firm of John Marshall.
Dorothy's most famous book was The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse (1784). Other titles included Anecdotes of a Boarding School, or an antidote to the vices of those Establishments (1790) and Little Stories for Little Folks (c. 1785). Kilner wrote clearly and well, but in an age when the moral element in children's literature was still dominant. So her book The Village School (1795) is subtitled A Collection of Entertaining Histories for the Instruction and Amusement of All Good Children, and the stories feature a Mrs. Bell (the schoolteacher) and a Mr. Right (the parson). The book concludes: "From this fatal accident it is to be hoped, that every body will learn to be extremely cautious not to leave candles burning near linen, nor, indeed, any where, without constantly watching, that they may not do mischief." Nonetheless, her discernment of children's character and amusements shines through.
Copies of the books of Dorothy and Mary Ann were found long after their deaths in a trunk in their Maryland Point home. Several titles continued to be reprinted for many years. The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse, for instance, reappeared in 1870 in a collection edited by Charlotte M. Yonge, entitled A Storehouse of Stories.
Read more about this topic: Dorothy Kilner
Famous quotes containing the word writings:
“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.””
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)