Margaret Pollock Sherwood (November 1, 1864 – September 24, 1955) was an American professor of English literature and author of novels, short stories, poetry, and essays.
Early life and education
Margaret Pollock Sherwood, sister of Mary Sherwood, was born on November 1, 1864, in Ballston, New York. She graduated from secondary school at a private boarding school in Newburgh, New York, and from Vassar College in 1886. In 1888, after a semester of study at the University of Zurich, she studied for a semester at the University of Oxford. She taught in Wellesley College's English department from 1889 to 1931, when she retired. In 1898, she received a Ph.D. from Yale University and in 1920 a Doctor of Letters from New York University. For a number of years she sometimes taught part-time at the University Extension of Columbia University.
Career
Her first novel An Experiment in Altruism (1895, Macmillan), published under the pseudonym "Elizabeth Hastings", generated considerable discussion as to the novelist's true identity.
Sherwood, who taught English Romantic poetry at Wellesley, wrote novels broadly designed to promote Christian compassion, but they recognized that individual changes of heart were not enough to bring about social improvements. An Experiment in Altruism (1895) even recounted a woman's traumatic experiment as a twelve-year-old charity volunteer who confronted unspeakable misery but had only gingham aprons to dispense. "Since then, all of the charity work I have heard of has seemed as ironic as that," she concluded, although she did not abandon the work....
