In 1911 The Sunday at Home eulogized Sarah Smith, who had used the name Hesba Stretton, for much of her "long, happy, useful and noble life." It was fitting that this tribute appeared in the periodical that in 1866 had published "Jessica's First Prayer," the work that was subsequently published in book form in 1867, translated into Braille and fifteen European and Asiatic languages, depicted on colored slides for Band of Hope temperance programs, and placed in all Russian schools by order of Czar Alexander II. This memoir left the impression that Smith had led a placid, tranquil life, but in fact she was no plaster saint.

The third daughter of Benjamin Smith, a printer, bookseller, and the first postmaster of Wellington, Shropshire, and Anne Bakewell Smith, a strict and notably intelligent Methodist, Sarah Smith was a best-selling Religious Tract Society author whose pseudonym became a byword for Evangelical fiction for...