Sarah Smith, an evangelical English author of Christian children's novels, used the pseudonym Hesba Stretton. These were really popular. By the late nineteenth century, Jessica's First Prayer had sold one million and a half copies, 10 times more than Alice in Wonderland. She created "Hesba Stretton" by combining the initials of herself and four surviving siblings with the name of a Shropshire village she visited, All Stretton, where her sister Anne owned a property, Caradoc Lodge. Sarah Smith was the daughter of Benjamin Smith (1793-1878), a bookseller from Wellington, Shropshire, and his wife Anne Bakewell Smith (1798-1842), a prominent Methodist. Smith, one of the most popular Evangelical writers of the nineteenth century, used "Christian principles as a protest against specific social evils in her children's books." Her moral and semi-religious stories, primarily for children, were widely published and frequently used as classroom and Sunday-school rewards. She became a regular contributor to Household Words and All the Year Round under Charles Dickens' editorship after her sister successfully submitted a piece she wrote without her knowledge. In total, she wrote around 40 novels.
