Mary E. Leslie

Mary Eliza Leslie (January 13, 1834 – ) was a writer and Baptist missionary in colonial India.

Life and career Mary Eliza Leslie was born on January 13, 1834, in Monghyr, India. She was the daughter of the Rev. Andrew Leslie (1798–1870) and his second wife. A product of the Scottish Enlightenment, Andrew Leslie was a printer who travelled to India as a Baptist missionary. His first wife, Eliza Franklin (1805–1826), died there and Andrew Leslie married the daughter of his predecessor, the Rev. John Chamberlain, and they had a son and a daughter together. Andrew leslie took the pulpit of the Lower Circular Road Baptist Church in Calcutta in 1842.

Leslie also wrote a number of prose works based on her missionary and educational work. They are: Dawn of Light: A Story of the Zenana Mission (London, 1868), Eastern Blossoms: Sketches of Native Christian Life in India (London, 1875), and A Child of the Day: A Brief Memorial of Mrs. H. C. Mukerji (Calcutta, 1882).