in her father's library. Sherwood states in her autobiography that by the age of thirteen, she had reached her full height, but her mother continued to dress her like a child, so she hid in the woods with a book and a doll. Despite her lonely childhood, she seems to have enjoyed attending Madame St. Quentin's School for Girls at Reading Abbey, which was run by French émigrés and also attended by Jane Austen. Sherwood spent some of her teenage years in Lichfield, where she enjoyed the company of the naturalist Erasmus Darwin, the educational reformer Richard Lovell Edgeworth, his daughter Maria Edgeworth, and the poet Anna Seward. Although she was intellectually stimulated by them, she was distressed by their lack of faith and later described Richard Edgeworth as an "infidel". She also criticized Seward's persona of the female author, writing in her autobiography that she would never model herself on a woman who wore a wig and accumulated male flatterers. She was determined to become a writer and her father encouraged her. When she was 17, her father helped her publish her first story, Traditions (1795). When Sherwood's father died in 1795, her family retired from active social life, since her mother preferred seclusion, and moved to Bridgnorth, Shropshire, into "a somewhat uncomfortable house" in the town's High Street. At Bridgnorth Sherwood began writing sentimental novels; in 1802 she sold Margarita for £40 to Mr. Hazard of Bath, and The History of Susan Grey, a Pamela-like novel, for £10. She also taught at a local Sunday school. Marriage and India In 1799, Sherwood married her cousin, Captain Henry Sherwood. For several years, she accompanied her husband and his regiment, the 53rd Foot, on postings throughout Britain. In 1804, he was promoted to paymaster, which slightly improved their finances. In 1805 the regiment was ordered to India and the Sherwoods were forced to leave behind their first child, Mary Henrietta, with Sherwood's mother and sister in England. Sherwood's four-month voyage to India was hard; she was pregnant again and the regiment's ship was attacked by French warships. The Sherwoods stayed in India for eleven years, moving with the army and a growing family from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Dinapore (Danapur), Berhampore (Baharampur), Cawnpore (Kanpur) and Meerut. They had six children there: Henry (1805–1807), Lucy Martha (1807–1808), Lucy Elizabeth (1809–1835), Emily (1811–1833), Henry Martyn, who became a minister (181321 January 1912), and