Autograph Letter Signed to an unnamed correspondent ("Madam")

Religious, devotional and educational writer (1815-1906). Three pages, 8vo, light foxing not affecting clarity of text, laid down. A good letter about her relatively new educational venture in which she clarifies the status of the prospective pupil. "[The school] has not been established for the children of an upper class". She claims that the groundwork is well-laid, repeats that classes are mixed, recalling her own education on the Isle of Wight - "I certainly never gained any harm from it". She describes St Bonifaces as it is ("in its infancy", few boarders, the need for a governess). She and her sister give lessons and the local Clergy take a great interest. She encloses a prospectus. (Presumably she was writing to a prospective parent). "In 1866 Miss Sewell, convinced of the need of better education for girls of the middle class, founded at Ventnor St. Boniface School, which came to have a building of its own and to be known as St. Boniface Diocesan School. Its many years' prosperity was gradually checked by the High Schools which came into being in 1872". (DNB)