Her parents Ann (born Sharp) and the Reverend John Sheldon arranged for their daughters to attend Handsworth Ladies' College and remarkably three of the girls went on to higher education in Cambridge.
[5][6] Sheldon also contributed a section on Nemertines to volume 2 of the Cambridge Natural History series.
During World War I, she worked for YMCA in Birmingham, where she was one of the earliest women drivers in the country.
He had suffered from paralysis nearly all his life but he had published a number of books and travelled widely with his six sisters.
[8] It was Lilian and Walter de la Mare who wrote the introduction to his last work published in 1932.