Forbidden Journeys : Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers

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 In many ways themselves restricted to the status of children, Victorian women were less inclined than the men of their time to idealize childhood--and the children's stories they wrote often tended to be darker and wilder than those of their male counter-parts. As the eleven brilliant stories collected here demonstrate, these fairy tales by Victorian women constitute a distinct literary tradition, one startlingly subversive of the society that fostered it. Collected for the first time in one volume, these fairy tales and fantasies are fascinating for more than their social and historical implications: They are extraordinary stories, full of strange delights for readers of any age. From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's adaptations of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" and "Beauty and the Beast," and Jean Ingelow's fantastic novel Mopsa the Fairy to Christina Rossetti's unsettling antifantasies in Speaking Likenesses, these are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. In collecting these works, two of our most distinguished Victorian scholars rescue authors such as Ritchie, Ingelow, Juliana Horatia Ewing, and Mary Louisa Molesworth from undeserved obscurity. At the same time, Auerbach and Knoepflmacher bring to the fore the power of the shorter prose fantasies of more familiar writers like Rossetti, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and E. Nesbit. Five introductory essays by Auerbach and Knoepflmacher place these stories within the fairy-tale tradition and the context of Victorian juvenile and adult fiction. Defining the tales in relation to the Victorian preoccupation with mythmaking, they identify the astringent social satire and literary mockery present in each work. As entertaining as it is enlightening, this anthology ushers readers into a fantasy world of wit, perversity, and wonder As these eleven dark and wild stories demonstrate, fairy tales by Victorian women constitute a distinct literary tradition, one startlingly subversive of the society that fostered it. From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's adaptations of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" to Christina Rossetti's unsettling antifantasies in Speaking Likenesses , these are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. Besides their social and historical implications, they are extraordinary stories, full of strange delights for readers of any age. " Forbidden Journeys is not only a darkly entertaining book to read for the fantasies and anti-fantasies told, but also is a significant contribution to nineteenth-century cultural history, and especially feminist studies." United Press International "A service to feminists, to Victorian Studies, to children's literature and to children."Beverly Lyon Clark, Women's Review of Books "These are stories to laugh over, cheer at, celebrate, and wince at. . . . Forbidden Journeys is a welcome reminder that rebellion was still possible, and the editors' intelligent and fascinating commentary reveals ways in which these stories defied the Victorian patriarchy."Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres Edited By Nina Auerbach And U.c. Knoepflmacher. Includes Bibliographical References.