Florence Montgomery

Florence Montgomery was an English novelist and children's writer, born in 1843 and died in 1923. She is best remembered for Misunderstood (1869), a novel about family life and the painful gap between what children feel and what adults notice.

Library and reference sources describe her as coming from a military family and beginning her storytelling early, first entertaining her younger sisters before moving into print. She went on to publish many novels, but Misunderstood remained the book most closely associated with her name.

What still makes Montgomery interesting is the emotional clarity of her writing. Even in a century that produced many children's books, her fiction stood out for its sympathy, seriousness, and understanding of childhood sorrow.