This Country of Ours (Yesterday's Classics)

Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall (usually credited as H. E. Marshall (1867–1941) was a British author, particularly well known for her works of popular national history for children. She was born in Bo'ness, Scotland, and her father was John Marshall JP, an earthenware manufacturer. She was educated at a girls' boarding school called Laurel Bank, in Melrose. Between 1901 and 1904 she was the superintendent of a hall of residence for female students at Glasgow University, but, otherwise, she appears to have made her living throughout her life by writing. She was unmarried. 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. H. E. Marshall is famous for her 1905 children's history of England, Our Island Story: A History of England for Boys and Girls, illustrated by A. S. Forrest. In the USA 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, much of it uses Shakespeare's plays for historical sources, like the section of Richard III is really a summary of the play.[citation needed] 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 UK's primary schools. Readers of The Daily Telegraph contributed £25,000 to the cost of the reprint.