What is it about?
The popular and highly successful Fairy Book (1889-1912) series continues to influence the way we read fairy tales today. The Fairy Books are often attributed to the folklorist, anthropologist, and writer Andrew Lang despite his repeated assertions that he edited, but did not write, the stories comprising the series. Indeed, feminist scholars have repeatedly highlighted the translations and adaptations of folktales from around the world that several women, included Andrew's wife, Nora, contributed to the Fairy Books. Extending this work, I use archival evidence to prove that Nora also edited the majority of the Fairy Books. Then, by examining Andrew's prefaces to individual volumes, the books' covers and title pages, and contemporary advertisements for and reviews of the series, I demonstrate that 1) Nora's translations were consistently recast as domestic labour performed under her husband's supervision, and 2) her editorial work was deliberately effaced. I contend that these misrepresentations, which I situate in the literary tradition that Jennifer Schacker calls "Woman Tells Story While Man Takes Notes," were integral to the series' marketing as a fairy-tale collection on par with those of Perrault and the Grimms and as a child-friendly extension of the Andrew Lang brand. Finally, I turn to Nora's own letters and essays, her preface to The Strange Story Book (1912), and the stories she chose for that volume; these illustrate, I conclude, her resistance to the erasure of her work. They — and Nora herself — deserve further critical attention.
Featured Image
Photo by Cathy Mü on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This article challenges our understanding of the Fairy Books, a popular and influential children's series, and argues for Nora Lang's rightful place in literary history.
Perspectives
Investigating why Nora Lang's contributions to the Fairy Books have historically been minimized can help us more fully understand 1) the Fairy Book series itself, 2) the British children's book market of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and 3) some of the ways in which women's literary work is minimized and under-appreciated, particularly in collaborations between husbands and wives.
Andrea Day
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “Almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang”: Nora Lang, Literary Labour, and the Fairy Books, Women s Writing, September 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2017.1371938.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
