Her mother died in 1785, and after the father's second marriage in 1790, she was sent to Manor School in York and spent much of her childhood with paternal relatives.
During her girlhood, Mrs Penrose had frequently stayed with close relatives and guardians, the Misses Cartwright, at Mirfield Hall, Markham, a village in Nottinghamshire.
[2] She met her husband in the village, and used its name as the nom de plume of "Mrs Markham", under which she gained celebrity as a writer of history and other books for the young.
[3][2] The best known of her books was A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III (1823), which went through numerous editions.
[2] The distinctive characteristic of Mrs Markham's histories was the elimination of all the "horrors" of history, and of the complications of party politics, as being unsuitable for the youthful mind; and the addition to each chapter of "Conversations" between a fictitious group consisting of teacher and pupils bearing upon the subject matter.