Hesba Stretton was the pen name of Sarah Smith (27 July 1832 - 8 October 1911), an English writer of children's books. She concocted the name from the initials of herself and four surviving siblings and part of the name of a Shropshire village she visited, All Stretton, where her sister Anne owned a house.

Sarah Smith was the daughter of a bookseller, Benjamin Smith (1793-1878) of Wellington, Shropshire and his wife Anne Bakewell Smith (1798-1842), a noted Methodist. She and her elder sister attended the Old Hall, a school in the town, but were largely self-educated.

Smith became the chief writer for the Religious Tract Society. Her experience of working with slum children in Manchester in the 1860s gave her books a greater sense of authenticity, for they "drive home the abject state of the poor with almost brutal force." She became one of the co-founders in 1894 of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (created in 1894), which combined with similar societies in other cities such as Manchester to form the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children some five years later. However, she resigned after a decade in protest against what she saw as financial mismanagement.

In retirement in Richmond, Surrey, the Smith sisters ran a branch of the Popular Book Club for working-class readers. Sarah died at home on 8 October 1911, surviving her sister by only eight months. Source: Wikipedia