SOURCE: Ciraulo, Darlene. “Fairy Magic and the Female Imagination: Mary Lamb's ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream.’” Philological Quarterly 78, no. 4 (fall 1999): 439-53.

In the following essay, Ciraulo contends that Mary Lamb's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” exhibits her view of pedagogy and interest in developing good judgement in women, focusing on her use of fairies as comic characters as opposed to allegorical representations of the imagination.

During the period between 1806 and 1809, Mary and Charles Lamb coauthored children's literature for William Godwin's Juvenile Library. Tales from Shakespear, designed for the use of Young Persons was issued in two volumes and “embellished with Copper Plates” in January of 1807. In second and third editions, Godwin affixes a publisher's note. The tales are not precisely for “the amusement of mere children,” but for “young ladies advancing to the state of womanhood.”¹ As Mary had explained in the 1807 Preface, “For young ladies too, it has been...