Maisie Ward

Maisie Ward
Born	4 January 1889 Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England
Died	28 January 1975 New York, NY
Occupation	Publisher
Language	English
Genre	Biography, Apologetics
Notable works	Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Spouse	Frank Sheed
Children	Rosemary Sheed, Wilfrid Sheed

Mary Josephine "Maisie" Ward (4 January 1889 – 28 January 1975) descendant of one of Britain's distinguished Catholic families, was a writer, publisher, and speaker.

Masie Ward was born in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight on 4 January 1889, the eldest of the five children of Wilfrid Philip Ward and the novelist Josephine Mary Hope-Scott Ward. On her mother's side she was descended from Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk and on her father's side from William George Ward, a prominent member of the Oxford Movement. All four of her grandparents were converts to Roman Catholicism.

She spent her childhood at first on the Isle of Wight, then Eastbourne, and finally in Dorking, before being sent off to board at St Mary's School, Cambridge. Here she was influenced by the preaching of Robert Hugh Benson and inspired by Mary Ward who had founded the order of nuns who ran the school.

On leaving school, Masie returned home to become her father's secretary. She worked for the Red Cross as a nurse during the First World War, and after her father's death in 1916 she coedited with her mother a posthumous collection of his last lectures.

Famous in her day as one of the names behind the imprint Sheed & Ward and as a forceful public lecturer in the Catholic Evidence Guild, her reputation has dimmed in subsequent decades. That is an ironic development given that she and her husband were ahead of their time in so many ways, foreshadowing most of what was good about the Second Vatican Council.

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