SOURCE: “Sundering Women from Boys: Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy,” in Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 270-311.

In the following essay, Knoepflmacher presents an in-depth examination of the ways in which Ingelow, in the short tale “The Life of John Smith” and the fantasy novel Mopsa the Fairy, both acquiesced to and resisted the patriarchal authority advanced by such Victorian counterparts as Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, and George MacDonald.

Yet—to gaze on her again (As my tale has taught thee), Potent Fairy, I am fain, Therefore have I sought thee— Through the forest, through the lea, Through the tangled wildwood, For I know she dwells with thee, And her name is—childhood! 

—Jean Ingelow, “Mimie's Grass Net,” 1850

It is almost strange in these days to find how quietly a popular writer could live with the world's bustle all around her...