author
Mrs. Sale Barker
1841–1892
A prolific Victorian writer for children, she filled magazines and storybooks with lively tales for young readers. Writing as Mrs. Sale Barker, she published dozens of books and also helped shape one of the period's best-known children's magazines.
1 Audiobook
Little Wideawake: A story book for little children
by Mrs. Sale Barker
About the author
Born Lucy Elizabeth Drummond Davies in 1841, she later became known as Lucy Sale-Barker and also as Lucy Villiers after her first marriage. She was a British writer for children who first contributed occasional pieces to magazines including the Dublin University Magazine and St James's Magazine before turning more regularly to children's writing in the early 1870s.
Over roughly the next decade and a half, she published more than forty books for young readers. Her work was closely tied to Victorian family reading and children's periodicals, and she is especially associated with Little Wide Awake, a magazine she edited as well as wrote for.
She died in 1892. Remembered today under the name Mrs. Sale Barker, she stands out as one of the many energetic nineteenth-century authors who helped build a wide world of stories for children.