Sarah Stickney Ellis, born Sarah Stickney (1799 – 16 June 1872), also known as Sarah Ellis, was an English author. She was a Quaker turned Congregationalist. Her numerous books are mostly about women's roles in society. She argued that women had a religious duty as daughters, wives and mothers to provide an influence for good that would improve society. Early life Sarah Stickney had been brought up as a Quaker, but latterly chose to be an Independent or Congregationalist, as did many of those involved in the London Missionary Society. She shared her future husband's love of books and of writing. Already a published writer (Pictures of Private Life and The Poetry of Life), she was also a contributor to The Christian Keepsake and Missionary Annual edited by the widower Rev William Ellis. She and Ellis met at the home of a mutual friend, who held prominent positions in the London Missionary Society, and with whom she worked for the missionary cause and to promote their common interest in temperance. The couple married on 23 May 1837 but were unable to take a honeymoon, as William's eldest daughter Mary was ill. She died in June and was buried in the London burial ground of Bunhill Fields, next to her mother. William Ellis had started to become a successful writer on the topography, history, botany, and ethnography of Polynesia, since returning from the South Seas. Sarah Ellis gained her own success, primarily with books on women's roles in society. Conduct books Well-known works of Sarah Ellis are The Wives of England (1843), The Women of England, The Mothers of England, The Daughters of England, and some more directly educational works such as Rawdon House and Education of the Heart: Women's Best Work. Related to her principal literary theme of moral education for women, she established Rawdon House in Hertfordshire, a school for young ladies intended to apply the principles illustrated in her books to the "moral training, the formation of character, and in some degree the domestic duties of young ladies." Unusually for the time, the school was non-denominational and included cookery and house management in the curriculum. With few exceptions, boys and girls were educated separately in 19th-century England, and the question of how to educate women was a subject of debate. It was common for women, as well as men, to believe that the former should not be educated