The Snowball Society: A Story for Children

The Snowball Society #1

by Mary Bramston, Alfred Pearse (Illustrator)

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256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

Born in 1841, Mary Eliza Bramston was the eldest daughter of the Rev. John Bramston of Witham, Essex, who was appointed Dean of Winchester in 1872. From 1868 to 1875, Bramston kept house for her brother, John Trant Bramston, who worked as a housemaster in Winchester College. It was here that she became friends with the Anglican author Charlotte Mary Yonge.

In 1878, following her brother's marriage, Bramston left Winchester for Truro, where she ran the boarding house for the newly founded Truro High School, before moving on to Croyden, where she held a similar position at the boarding house for the Girls High School there. Some time after 1896, Bramston returned to Winchester, where she helped her half-sister Anna, and friend Amelie Leroy (author Esme Stuart) with their work for Winchester High School. Here, Bramston also studied theology, becoming, in 1906, one of the first five women to receive the Anglican diploma of Student of Theology. She died in 1912.

Bramston was a High Anglican, and her interest in theology is evident in all of her work, including her fiction for adults and children. She is noteworthy, in the Girls' School Story genre, for being the first author to pen a series (beginning with The Snowball Society, in 1877) that followed the same group of girls and women.