About Mary Sheldon
May French Sheldon, later christened Mary, was born on May 10, 1847 in Beaver, Pennsylvania. Her father, Joseph French, was a civil engineer and a colonel in the U.S. Army. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a physician. In Mary’s early adulthood, she moved to London where she eventually owned a publishing house named Saxon & Company. In 1876, at the age of 29, she married Eli Lemon Sheldon, an American banker and publisher who also lived in London (Tinling, 256).
In the year 1890, Mary’s friend Henry Morgan Stanley returned from extensive travelling in Africa. Sheldon was captured by his stories and desired to travel there herself (Tinling, 257). She wrote about her travels in Sultan to Sultan: Adventures among the Masai and other Tribes of East Africa.
