MRS

MARKHAM  , the pseudonym of Elizabeth Penrose (1780-1837), English writer, daughter of Edmund Cartwright the inventor of the power-loom . She was born at her father's rectory at Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire, on the 3rd of August 1780 . In 1804 she married the Rev . John Penrose, a country clergyman in Lincolnshire and a voluminous theological writer . During her girlhood Mrs Penrose had frequently stayed with relatives at Markham, a, village in Nottinghamshire, and from this place she took the nom de plume of " Mrs Markham," under which she gained celebrity as a writer of history and other books for the young . The best known of her books was A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III . (1823), which went through numerous editions . In 1828 she published a History of France . Both these works enjoyed a wide popularity in America as well as in England . The distinctive characteristic of " Mrs Markham's " histories was the elimination of all the " horrors " of history, and of the complications of modern party politics, as being unsuitable for the youthful mind; and the addition to each chapter of " Conversations " between a fictitious group consisting of teacher and pupils bearing upon the subject matter . Her less well-known works were Amusements of Westernheath, or Moral Stories for Children (2 vols., 1824); A Visit to the Zoological Gardens (1829); two volumes of stories entitled The New Children's Friend (1832); Historical Conversations for Young People (1836); Sermons for Children (1837) . Mrs Markham died at Lincoln on the 24th of January 1837 .

See

Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and his Friends (2 vols., London, 1891) ; G . C . Boase and W . P . Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (3 vols., London, 1874-1882) .