• Contact

  • Newsletter

  • About us

  • Delivery options

  • Prospero Book Market Podcast

  • The Play of Belief in Nineteenth-Century Fairy Tales and Fairy Narratives

    The Play of Belief in Nineteenth-Century Fairy Tales and Fairy Narratives by White, Laura;

    Series: Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present;

      • GET 10% OFF

      • Publisher's listprice GBP 171.99
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        77 653 Ft (73 955 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 7 766 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 69 887 Ft (66 560 Ft + 5% VAT)

    69 887 Ft

    db

    Availability

    printed on demand

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Edition number 1
    • Publisher Taylor & Francis
    • Date of Publication 7 June 2026

    • ISBN 9781041137788
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages256 pages
    • Size 229x152 mm
    • Weight 630 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 20 Illustrations, black & white
    • 693

    Categories

    Short description:

    The Play of Belief in Nineteenth-Century Fairy Tales and Fairy Narratives examines the range of playful negotiations with truth claims in British and American fantasies for children of the nineteenth century within the context of the era’s ebbing Christian commitments and competing forces for belief and disenchantment.

    More

    Long description:

    The Play of Belief in Nineteenth-Century Fairy Tales and Fairy Narratives examines the range of playful negotiations with truth claims in British and American fantasies for children of the nineteenth century within the context of the era’s ebbing Christian commitments and competing forces for belief and disenchantment.

    While Victorian culture was broadly Christian, its fantasy literature for children shed the explicit piety of writers of earlier generations to embrace magical tales of many stripes. In many ways the story of children’s literature in the nineteenth century is one of a Christian culture disinheriting itself, turning its angels into fairies, its faith into a range of doubts, and blending its Christian ethics with progressive evolutionary ideals. The study shows how authors embraced a wide variety of rhetorical and narrative strategies by which play, ambiguity, and hesitation could suggest what is or is not “real.” Inevitably, such strategies brought disenchantment in their wake, for the more Victorian authors foregrounded the problem of belief, the more they betrayed the nervousness of their own affirmations, especially in the glut of sentiment and frenzied fantasy which typifies fin de siècle fairy tales.

    This essential study illuminates the historical nature of children’s literature, making it indispensable reading for scholars of Victorian culture, children's fantasy, and anyone fascinated by the enduring power of fairy tales.

    More

    Table of Contents:

    List of Illustrations
    Preface

    Introduction

    Chapter 1. Truth Claims in Two Cases of Nineteenth-Century Fairy Representations

    Truth Claims

    Chapter 2. Managing the Play of Belief within Children’s Fantasies

    Chapter 3. The Two Poles of Fantastic Suggestion: Beautiful Hesitations and the Object Lesson

    Chapter 4. Believing in Things

    Chapter 5. Nineteenth-Century American Fairy Tales: Exceptional Fantasies and the Gigantic

    Coda

    Bibliography

    Index

    More
    0