First printing of the Lathrop edition of this "early feminist fairy tale" (Clute & Grant) – this copy inscribed as a Christmas gift from Lathrop to her Aunt Nellie.
About fine in very good jacket.
Price: $750.00
[O]ne of the earliest fantasy novels to respond to ALICE IN WONDERLAND." – Carolyn Sigler
Ingelow was part of the circle of Victorian fantasy writers, including Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald, who played with traditional tales of Fairie to create entirely new magical worlds that laid the groundwork for modern fantasy. First published in 1869, MOPSA THE FAIRY is often viewed as an imitation of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, but it is much more: a "vivid and haunting fantasy of female power that subverts many of the familiar fairy-tale conventions invoked by Carroll in the ALICE books" (Sigler). While deliberately mimicking the structure of ALICE – the little boy Jack falls into a fantasy world – MOPSA is really about a fairy queen coming into her own power. This highly-sought Lathrop edition is one of the scarcest of the Golden Age American illustrator's books. Already rare in the dust jacket, this is an exceptional association copy.
Rear more: Clute and Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 330; Sigler (editor), Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books; Talairach-Vielmas, Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927. 8'' x 5.5''. Original maroon cloth lettered in gilt, pictorial paste-on. In original unclipped ($1.75) white dust jacket with same image repeated on front panel. Red topstain, fore-edge machine deckle, orange pictorial endpapers. Illustrated by Lathrop with color frontispiece, 12 full-page black-and-white images and numerous half-page black-and-white images. I-B on copyright page. [12], 259, [1] pages. Book slightly dusty; jacket with shallow chipping around spine ends and corners, tape repairs on verso, a bit of light soiling.
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