author
Mary Ann Kilner
1753–1831
Best known for The Adventures of a Pincushion, this eighteenth-century English writer helped shape early children's fiction with lively moral tales and everyday objects turned into storytellers.
3 Audiobooks
The Adventures of a Pincushion, Designed Chiefly for the Use of Young Ladies
by Mary Ann Kilner
Jemima Placid; or, The Advantage of Good-Nature
by Mary Ann Kilner
William Sedley : or, the evil day deferred
by Mary Ann Kilner
About the author
Born Mary Ann Maze in London in 1753, she became a prolific writer for young readers in the late eighteenth century. She wrote under the name "S. S.", a reference to Spital Square, where she grew up, and she came from a French Huguenot family.
Her best-known book is The Adventures of a Pincushion, a popular moral tale that gave an ordinary household object a memorable voice. Working in the same literary circle as her sister-in-law Dorothy Kilner, she contributed to a growing body of children's books that mixed amusement with lessons about behavior, manners, and daily life.
Mary Ann Kilner died in 1831. Although little personal material seems to survive online, her books remain part of the history of early children's literature, especially for the way they used playful storytelling to teach young readers.