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Forbidden Journeys

Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers

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 


380 pages | 29 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 1992

Folklore and Mythology

Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: Refashioning Fairy Tales
The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Beauty and the Beast, Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The Brown Bull of Norrowa, Maria Louisa Molesworth
Amelia and the Dwarfs, Juliana Horathia Ewing
Part Two: Subversions
Nick, Christina Rossetti
Christmas Crackers, Julian Horathia Ewing
Behind the White Brick, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Melisande, or, Long and Short Division, E. Nesbit
Fortunatus Rex & Co., E. Nesbit
Part Three: A Fantasy Novel
Mopsa the Fairy, Jean Ingelow
Part Four: A Trio of Antifantasies
Speaking Likenesses, Christina Rossetti
Biographical Sketches
Further Readings

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