[2] 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.
[3] On leaving school, Maisie returned home to work for her father when he served as editor of the Dublin Review.
[7] Ward also wrote biographies of John Henry Newman, her own father, and Robert Browning; and on other areas, including New Testament scholarship, spirituality, and stories of saints and lesser notables, among them her good friend, the writer and mystic Caryll Houselander.
Sheed wrote a posthumous tribute to his wife under the title The Instructed Heart.