First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Daughter of a Unitarian minister and schoolmaster, the penal reformer and educationist Mary Carpenter (1807 77) grew up in a pious family with a strong sense of obligation to those who were less fortunate. Moved by the appalling circumstances of destitute children in Bristol, she established her first ragged school in 1846. In her bid to improve the difficult lives of juvenile delinquents, her enlightened philosophy was one of rehabilitation rather than retribution, emphasising the importance of giving children a sense of self-worth. These views form the basis of this landmark work, first published in 1851. Marshalling a range of evidence in support of her argument, Carpenter highlights the need for radical change in the treatment of young offenders. Her lobbying bore fruit in England with the passage of the Youthful Offenders Act (1854), described as 'the Magna Carta of the neglected child'.

In her biography of writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964, née Mary Flannery), Mary Carpenter introduces young readers to one of the most renowned American authors. With an accessible style of writing, Flannery O'Connor gives younger readers an overview of O'Connor's life and examines the influences, such as her family, region, and education, that helped her become one of the most respected fiction writers of the twentieth century. In a frank but age-appropriate manner, Carpenter discusses the writer's rural southern upbringing, her relationship to race, her chronic lupus, and her Catholic faith. The book will appeal to younger (nine- to ten-year-old) readers with sophisticated interests along with, and maybe more importantly, those older middle-school students who are not yet skillful readers and who thus often search with difficulty for interesting topics presented in books of a shorter length than most written for that age group. Mary Flannery's life is inspirational. Her childhood in Savannah, Georgia, was both difficult and privileged. During the Great Depression, her father had to leave home to find work and then became very ill. Later in small-town Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery lived with her mother and an extended family of strong women. Flannery's ability to know her mind at an early age helped her build an artistic reputation starting in high school. Through her fiction, she went on to become a role model for unconventional girls everywhere and for anyone who dreams of becoming a writer.