For centuries to come, this book will inspire imaginative people. Beyond
all doubt, it will be an ingredient of future poetry.--Rebecca West
It may be read with a great deal of simple enjoyment and then it sticks
like a splinter in the mind.--Angela Carter
It seems to me a perfect, utterly original novel, and no one but a poet
could have written it...The book is totally idiosyncratic and yet there
isn't a line you couldn't identify yourself with.--Harry Mathews
Miss M., the narrator of these fictional memoirs, is a diminutive young
woman (though just how diminutive, the author never says) with a passion
for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals. Miss M.
tells of her early life as a dreamy orphan and, in particular, of her
tempestuous twentieth year--in which she falls in love with a beautiful
and ambitious full-sized woman and is courted by a male dwarf.
Concluding that she must choose either to simply tolerate her difference
or grow callous to it, Miss M. resolves to become independent by
offering herself up as a spectacle in a circus.
One of the strangest and most enchanting works of fiction ever
written.--Alison Lurie, from her foreword
De la Mare's masterpiece...It acts upon the reader like a ghostly
visitation, at once unsettling and revelatory.--Washington Post
Here is a great book.--New York Times Book Review
Sentences, pages, whole chapters cause us to catch our
breath.--Atlantic Monthly
After a long period of neglect de la Mare may be beginning to be seen as
the remarkable writer that he is.--John Bayley, New York Review of
Books
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) wrote numerous novels, short stories,
essays, and poems. He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
for Memoirs of a Midget. Other major works include the children's
novel, The Three Royal Monkeys, Henry Brocken, and The Return. His
book Desert Islands is also available from Paul Dry Books.
Alison Lurie is the author of many highly praised novels as well as
two collections of essays on children's literature, Don't Tell the
Grown-Ups and Boys and Girls Forever. She has taught children's
literature and folklore at Cornell University for many years.
