Lifespan: 1818-1906
Nationality: English
Types of Work: Novels, travelogue, self-help
Bio:
Maria Georgina Shirreff was an English novelist who was born on 7 March 1816 in Blackheath, London to Admiral William Henry Shirreff, superintendent of the dock yard at Chatham, and Elizabeth Murray. She married William Grey on 7 January 1841.
Maria and her sister, Emily, attended a boarding school in Paris, which later influenced some of the scenes in Maria's novel, Love and Sacrifice. In 1831, Admiral Shirreff was appointed captain at the port of Gibraltor and the family left Paris. The girls finished their education on their own, traveling extensively, becoming expert linguists in French, Spanish, and Italian, and reading books from their father's large library. Through their father's sphere of influence, they also became acquainted with several intellectuals of the day.
In 1834, Mrs. Sherriff brought her daughters back to England, and Maria and Emily began to write. Their first publication was Letters from Spain and Barbary, published in 1835. They next published a novel, Passion and Principle, in 1841.
The same year that their joint novel came out, Maria married her cousin, William Thomas Grey, a wine merchant. The marriage was a happy one, but the couple had no children.
Maria was a proponent for the reformation of women's education, and she and her sister published a treatise on the subject titled Thoughts on Self Culture Adressed to Women.
After the death of her husband in 1864, Maria began to take on a more active role in public life. She became one of the first women to stand for election to the London School Board, but was not elected.
Maria and Emily were also suffragists, and she published a booklet in 1870 called Is the Exercise of the Suffrage Unfeminine?
She continued to give speeches and campaign for women's rights and education reform until she became to ill to be active. She died on 19 September 1906 at Kensington, London.
A more detailed biography is available on Wikipedia.
Novels:
Passion and Principle (1853) With Sister, Emily Anne Shirreff
Love's Sacrifice (1868)