The Infant's Progress

PAPERBACK EDITION - Mary Martha Sherwood was a prolific and influential writer of children’s literature in nineteenth century Britain. She composed over 400 books, tracts. The strongest themes in Sherwood’s early evangelical writings were the need to recognize one’s innate “depravity” and the need to prepare oneself for eternity. For Sherwood, the most important lessons emphasize “faith, resignation, and implicit obedience to the will of God.” The Infant’s Progress is an adaptation of John Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim’s Progress. In it she represents original sin as a child named “In-Bred Sin” who tempts the young pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City and it is these battles with In-Bred Sin that constitutes the major conflict in the book.