Born on April 26, 1828, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Martha Finley grew up there and in South Bend, Indiana. In 1853, after the deaths of both her parents, she moved to New York City; later she moved to Philadelphia and then to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. She taught school for a time and then turned to writing, at first for Sunday school publications under the name ╥Martha Farquharson.╙ A few early attempts at children╒s novels were not particularly successful, but with Elsie Dinsmore, 1867, she found a formula that would bring her fame and fortune.
The tale of a preternaturally virtuous young girl valiantly resisting various relatively petty temptations in the name of a somewhat fundamentalist Christianity found a wide audience that grew, over the course of 27 sequel volumes that took Elsie to grandmotherhood, to some 25 million readers in America and Britain. In addition to the Elsie Dinsmore series Martha Finley also produced a seven-volume series beginning with Mildred Keith, 1878, a nine-volume ╥Do-Good Library,╙ a twelve-volume ╥Pewit╒s Nest╙ series, and a ╥Finley╙ series of books for adults, a total of more than a hundred books. Single volumes for children appeared under such titles as Willie Elton, the Little Boy Who Loved Jesus, 1864, The Little Helper, 1868, Milly; or the Little Girl who Tried to Help Others and to do them Good, 1868, Our Fred; or Seminary Life at Thurston, 1874, and Twiddletewit, a Fairy Tale, 1898. Her books were generally ignored in their day by critics, a fact which affected not at all their enormous popularity with an uncritical audience; when the fashion for priggishness in literary children passed, they were all but forgotten. Martha Finley lived in Elkton, Maryland, from 1876 until her death there on January 29, 1909.
