ABSTRACT
Mary Cholmondeley, best known as the author of Red Pottage, a novel which exposed the hypocrisies of the English middle-class family through the eyes of its novelist-heroine, Hester Gresley, was the eldest daughter and third child of a clergyman, Richard Hugh Cholmondeley, rector of Hodnet in Shropshire, and his wife Emily Beaumont. Mary's own health was uncertain as she suffered from asthma. She never married, but later lived first with her widowed father in London, and after his death with her sister Victoria. Beginning her literary career by writing for periodicals such as The Graphic, she published her first novel, The Danvers Jewels, in 1887, and continued writing for the rest of her life. The writing of Under One Roof was assisted by Hester's diary, which Cholmondeley used to remind herself of what life was like at the rectory as they were all growing up.
