Background
She was born in Bo"ness, Scotland, and her father was John Marshall Justice of the Peace, an earthenware manufacturer.
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Henrietta Marshall
Edit ProfileEducation
She was educated at a girls" boarding school called Laurel Bank, in Melrose.
Career
Between 1901 and 1904 she was the superintendent of a hall of residence for female students at the University of Glasgow, but, otherwise, she appears to have made her living throughout her life by writing. As is made clear by the Prefaces of her books from time to time, she travelled extensively after 1904, including to Melbourne, California and China, although her obituary in The Times stated that she spent most of her life in Oxford and in London, where she died. In the United States of America the book was entitled An Island Story.
The book was a bestseller, was printed in numerous editions, and for fifty years was the standard and much-loved book by which children learned the history of England.
However a lot of this book is historically inaccurate and much of it uses Shakespeare"s plays for historical sources. Foreign example, the section of Richard III is really a summary of the play.
The book is still to be found in schools and homes, but the last printing was in 1953 and it went out of print in the 1960s. In 2005, an alliance of the Civitas think-tank and various national newspapers brought the book back into print, with the aim of sending a free copy to each of the United Kingdom"s primary schools.
Readers of The Daily Telegraph contributed £25,000 to the cost of the reprint.
H. East. Marshall also wrote:
Scotland"s Story: A History of Scotland for Boys and Girls (1906)
Beowulf: Translations (1908)
Our Empire Story (1908)
Canada"s Story from the Our Empire Story series
India"s Story from the Our Empire Story series
Australasia"s Story from the Our Empire Story series
South Africa"s Story from the Our Empire Story series
English Literature for Boys and Girls (1909)
A History of France (1912)
A History of Germany
This Country of Ours (1917) – the American title of the book, which was published in the United Kingdom as The Story of the United States (1919)
Kings and Things (1937).
