Maria Louisa Charlesworth

Maria Louisa Charlesworth (1 October 1819 in The Rectory, Blakenham Parva – 6 January 1880 in Nutfield, Surrey) was an English author of religious books.

Maria Charlesworth was the daughter of John Charlesworth (1782-1864), an Evangelical clergyman who was rector of Flowton when Maria was born and later rector of a London parish. A visitor in her father's parish from a young age, Maria Charlesworth drew on her experiences for The Female Visitor to the Poor (1846), as well as the fictionalised Ministering Children (1854). Ministering Children, set in a town modelled on Ipswich, sold over 170,000 copies during her lifetime – designed to teach children by example, it was especially popular as a 'reward book' for Sunday school prizes – and was translated into French, German and Swedish.

On her father's death in 1864 Maria Charlesworth lived for a while with her clergyman brother in Limehouse and then sent up a ragged school and a mission in Bermondsey. She retired to Nutfield in Surrey, where she died on 16 October 1880.

• The Female Visitor to the Poor, 1846
• Ministering children, 1854
• Africa's Mountain Valley, 1865
• A Sequel to Ministering Children, 1867
• Oliver of the Mill, 1876
• The Old Looking-Glass; or Mrs. Dorothy Cope's Recollections of Service, 1877
• Sunday Afternoons in the Nursery, or Familiar Narratives from the Book of Genesis, 1885.