In an "autobiography", Margery describes the many trials and joys of growing up in India and England in the late 1800's. While she becomes an orphan at an early age, her close friend Eleanor proves steady support as she matures from a child to a young lady. She and her adoptive older sister turn to everything with enthusiasm and grace, and learning dressmaking is neither more nor less valued than learning Italian so they can read Dante, or collecting natural history specimens. Work first published in 1873/74, by Juliana Horatia Ewing the prolific author of children's stories. Her tales, which have hardly been excelled in sympathetic insight into child life, still enjoy undiminished popularity. Juliana Horatia Ewing - sometimes also styled Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing, or just "Mrs. Ewing" - is credited by Roger Lancelyn Green as being the author of the the "first outstanding child-novels" in English literature.