Dorothy Kilner

The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse Dorothy Kilner

Dorothy Kilner published anonymously at first and then under the successive pseudonyms of M. P. and Mary Pelham, in line with general practice for female authors in that period. "M. P." may have referred to her home town of Maryland Point. Both she and her sister-in-law were published by the London firm of John Marshall. Dorothy's most famous book was The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse (1784). This has been praised by a present-day critic as a book that "draws least attention to gaps and contradictions.... The story is episodic, as we follow the mouse Nimble through various households and overhear a variety of conversations.... This episodic, even picaresque, form effectively naturalizes-defuses-potential inconsistency." Other titles included Anecdotes of a Boarding School, or an antidote to the vices of those Establishments (1790) and Little Stories for Little Folks (c. 1785). Kilner wrote clearly and well, but in an age when the moral element in children's literature was still dominant. So her book The Village School (1795) is subtitled A Collection of Entertaining Histories for the Instruction and Amusement of All Good Children, and the stories feature a Mrs. Bell (the schoolteacher) and a Mr. Right (the parson). The book concludes: "From this fatal accident it is to be hoped, that every body will learn to be extremely cautious not to leave candles burning near linen, nor, indeed, any where, without constantly watching, that they may not do mischief." Nonetheless, her discernment of children's character and amusements shines through. Copies of the books of Dorothy and Mary Ann were found long after their deaths in a trunk in their Maryland Point home. Several titles continued to be reprinted for many years. The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse, for instance, reappeared in 1870 in a collection edited by Charlotte M. Yonge, entitled A Storehouse of Stories