Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature

by Nicola Bown

Overview

This study of the Victorian fascination with fairies reveals their significance in Victorian art and literature. Nicola Bown explores what the fairy meant to the Victorians, and why they were so captivated by a figure which nowadays seems trivial and childish. She argues that fairies were a fantasy that allowed the Victorians to escape from their worries about science, technology and the effects of progress. The fairyland they dreamed about was a reconfiguration of their own world, and the fairies who inhabited it were like themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521025508
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/30/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #33
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Nicola Bown is a lecturer in the Department of English at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published articles in Textual Practice, Women: A Cultural Review, and the Journal of Victorian Culture, and worked for the Royal Academy on their Victorian Fairy Paintings show. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: small enchantments; 1. Fancies of fairies and spirits and nonsense; 2. Queen Mab among the steam engines; 3. A few fragments of fairyology, shewing its connection with natural history; 4. A broken heart and a pocket full of ashes; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This is an impressive study, thoroughly documented, and enriching of our sense of cultural history." Victorian Studies

"A fresh evocation of the century's pressing anxieties and ingenious consolations." Studies in English Literature

From the Publisher