SOURCE: Godard, Barbara. “Crawford's Fairy Tales.” Studies in Canadian Literature 4, no. 1 (winter 1979): 109-35.

In the following essay, Godard examines the structure and style of Crawford's fairy tales.

Today, we sometimes forget that fairy tales were not always the exclusive domain of childhood. Their remote origins lie in the folk tradition, but in the last three centuries they have become part of popular literature. Recognition of this fact has often led readers to identify this relatively primitive art form, “the childhood of art,” with “the art of childhood.” In particular, this confusion gained ground in the nineteenth century when, between 1840 and 1890, Victorian England witnessed a great flowering of children's literature, much of it fairy tales, such as Kingsley's The Water Babies, Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring, Ruskin's King of the Golden River, to name some of the more famous examples. All these books were read by children; not...