Front cover image for Fairies in nineteenth-century art and literature

Fairies in nineteenth-century art and literature

"Although fairies are now banished to the realm of childhood, these diminutive figures were central to the work of many Victorian painters, novelists, poets and even scientists. It would be no exaggeration to say that the Victorians were obsessed with fairies: yet this obsession has hitherto received little scholarly attention. Nicola Bown reminds us of the importance of fairies in Victorian culture. In the figure of the fairy, the Victorians crystallised contemporary anxieties about the effects of industrialisation, the remoteness of the past, the value of culture and the way in which science threatened to undermine religion and spirituality. Above all, the fairy symbolised disenchantment with the irresistible forces of progress and modernity. As these forces stripped the world of its wonder, the Victorians consoled themselves by dreaming of a place and people suffused with enchantment that was disappearing from their own lives."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2001
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001
xiii, 235 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780521793155, 0521793157
46641806
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