Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women WritersNina Auerbach, U. C. Knoepflmacher This “darkly entertaining” story collection is “a significant contribution to nineteenth-century cultural history, and especially feminist studies" (United Press International). In the 1870s and 1880s, children’s literature saw some astonishingly bold and innovative writing by women authors. As these eleven dark and wild stories demonstrate, fairy tales by Victorian women constitute a distinct literary tradition, one that was startlingly subversive for its time. While writers such as Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie wrote nostalgic tales that pined for lost youth, their female counterparts had more serious—at times unsettling—concerns. From Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s adaptations of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" to Christina Rossetti’s unsettling anti-fantasies in Speaking Likenesses, the stories collected here are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. Besides their social and historical implications, they are extraordinary works of fiction, full of strange delights for readers of any age. "The editors’ intelligent and fascinating commentary reveals ways in which these stories defied the Victorian patriarchy."—Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres |
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
Subversions | 129 |
A Fantasy Novel | 207 |
A Trio of Antifantasies | 317 |
Biographical Sketches | 361 |
Further Readings | 369 |
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Common terms and phrases
Amelia Anna ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE answered apple apple-woman asked Aunt Aunt Judy's Magazine baby Barly beautiful began Belinda Belle boat brown bull Cecilia Charlotte Brontë child Children's Literature Christina Rossetti Christmas Christmas Crackers cracker cried dance daughter dear door dream dress dwarf Edith eyes face fairy tales Fairyland father felt female Flora Frances Hodgson Burnett garden gipsy girl Griffiths hair hand happy head heard Ingelow Jack and Mopsa Jack's Jane Eyre Jean Ingelow Juliana Horatia Ewing King kiss lady laughed looked Lulworth Maggie mamma Margaret Gatty Melisande mother Nesbit never night old woman parrot poor pretty Prince Princess Queen river rose Rossetti round seemed sitting sleep Sleeping Beauty stood story sure tell things thought told took trees turned Victorian voice walked window wish women wonder young