Memoirs of a Midget book cover

Memoirs of a Midget

Pages: 392
|
Published: 1 Jan 1921
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Description

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.

[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 MonkeysHenry Brocken, The Return, and Desert Islands. ]

[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. ]