Margaret Marshall Saunders
Margaret Marshall Saunders was a notable Canadian author, born in 1861 in Milton, Nova Scotia. She began her writing career in her twenties, eventually gaining recognition for her magazine stories and essays before publishing her first novel, *My Spanish Sailor*, in 1889. Saunders achieved significant acclaim with her second novel, *Beautiful Joe* (1893), which not only won prestigious awards but also established her as a pioneer in children's literature by narrating the story from an animal's perspective—specifically that of an abused dog. Her writing often reflected her deep commitment to animal rights and the welfare of children, themes that permeated her body of work, including her children's stories like *'Tilda Jane* and its sequel.
In addition to her literary contributions, Saunders was active in advocacy, earning recognition for her efforts, including an honorary M.A. from Acadia University in 1911. Her later works continued to explore moral lessons and the experiences of animals. Despite her success, financial difficulties and health issues plagued her later years, leading to periods of poverty. After her death in 1947, she was remembered as "Canada's most revered author," and her legacy endures through her impactful writing and advocacy for the vulnerable.
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Margaret Marshall Saunders
Author
- Born: April 13, 1861
- Birthplace: Milton, Nova Scotia, Canada
- Died: February 15, 1947
Biography
Prolific Canadian children’s author, novelist, and animal rights activist Margaret Marshall Saunders was born in 1861 in Milton, Nova Scotia, Canada, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She began writing in her early twenties, after encouragement from a friend who was impressed by a letter she had written for her father. Her initial publications were magazine stories and essays, for which she was impressively paid. She did not write a novel until 1889, when she penned a well-received romance called My Spanish Sailor.
Her second novel, Beautiful Joe (1893), established Saunders’s reputation by receiving two well-publicized awards: the American Humane Society Award and first prize in a contest to find a sequel to Black Beauty. Intended to teach children the virtues of kindness, Beautiful Joe is Saunders’s best-known book and the first of many told from an animal’s perspective, in this case, that of a family dog who had been abused by a former owner.
Saunders moved to Boston, attending some classes at Boston University, and then moved to California in 1898. She would move frequently over the next few years in pursuit of verisimilitude, choosing to live in and fully experience the places in which she wanted to set her stories. Shortly after moving to California, she published another romance, Rose a Charlitte: An Acadian Romance, set in the Nova Scotia of her childhood. Rose a Charlitte is her most popular adult work.
However, her children’s fiction most reflected her activist ideals. By 1901, she had developed an interest in the plight of abused and exploited children. ’Tilda Jane: An Orphan in Search of a Home (1901), and the 1909 sequel, ’Tilda Jane’s Orphans, are considered predecessors of Little Orphan Annie. In 1910, she published The Girl from Vermont: The Story of a Vacation School Teacher, an adult novel treating similar themes. In 1911, she was awarded an honorary M.A. from Acadia University, inspired in large part by her advocacy for the protection of children and animals.
These moral themes pervaded almost all of her subsequent writing. For example, both Golden Dicky: The Story of a Canary and His Friends (1919) and Bonnie Prince Fetlar: The Story of a Pony and His Friends (1920) are told from the perspective of animals, to motivate kind feelings toward them in children. Her sole work of nonfiction, My Pets: Real Happenings in My Aviary, recounted her experiences with the eccentric menagerie she kept throughout her life. Not until her last published novel, the semiautobiographical Esther de Warren: The Story of a Mid-Victorian Maiden (1927), did she abandon the explicit moral causes she had championed throughout her published work, focusing instead on the adventures of her life.
Saunders retired from writing in the 1920’s and traveled extensively, accompanied by her sister, delivering popular lectures and slide presentations on both animal welfare and her life story. However, her ill health forced her to stop traveling in 1940.
Saunders was respected for her writing and her ideals. She was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1935 and her works were popular with readers. However, financial mismanagement and eventual illness caused her to live in poverty during her last years. After she fell too ill to lecture, fellow Canadian writers in the Canadian Writers’ Association contributed funds to support her. Upon her death in 1947, Dorothy Howard’s obituary in the periodical Saturday Night described her as “Canada’s most revered author.”