The Short Stories of Mary Cholmondeley: Influential female author who satirised religion and rural life

Mary Cholmondeley was born in Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire on June 8th 1859, the third of eight children. Her father was appointed rector in 1874 in succession to his father. Much of the first 30 years of her life was taken up with helping her sickly mother run the household, her father with his parish work, and mitigating the effects of her asthma.

Mary began writing in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877, "What a pleasure and interest it would be to me in life to write ...