[1] The author mentions visiting Pandita Ramabai's work while being in India which indicates that the book was written sometime between the 1920s and the early 1930s.
The Preface to the book in Hendrickson Christian Classics Edition mentions that according to the records of the British Library,
He was educated at the University of Oxford, ordained as a priest in 1897, and in 1898 he was accepted as a missionary and left for the Hausaland Mission in Africa...
Following his return from India, Richardson's passion for evangelism was channeled into his career with the Church Army, a society of evangelists with the Anglican Communion.
49 meant—“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled?” The missionary tried to put them off with an evasive answer, not being very sure herself what those words meant.