Mrs Leicester's School finally unlocked the author's grief
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Mrs Leicester's School is a Victorian children's book whose stories are suffused with grief, according to the essay.
- The book's author killed her own mother, a biographical detail the essay invokes as echoing the text's preoccupation with loss.
- The essay's narrator was teaching a class of students when reading the book finally triggered their own long-suppressed grief.
- The narrator's father entered the hospital for what would be the final time shortly before Christmas last year, providing the personal backdrop for the essay.
- The essay frames the encounter with the forgotten Victorian text as the moment the narrator's delayed grief finally surfaced.
Why it matters: The essay uses 'Mrs Leicester's School' — whose author killed her own mother — as a literary mirror for unprocessed grief, with the narrator's reckoning arriving exactly as they stood in front of students and their father entered hospital for the final time before Christmas.
