SOURCE: Fisher, Margery. Introduction to Memoirs of a London Doll, Written by Herself, Edited by Mrs. Fairstar, by Richard Henry Horne, pp. vii-xxx. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.

In the following essay, Fisher provides a sketch of Horne, and examines his children's tales “King Penguin,” The Good-Natured Bear, and Memoirs of a London Doll.

Writing to his friend Elizabeth Barrett in the 1840's, Richard Henry Horne mentioned “a sort of Christmas book for children, called The London Doll”, which he had written not long before. It was not publicly acknowledged as his, though, until many years later. Horne loved mystification and indulged in pseudonyms even more than his contemporaries did. When he contributed an article on “The True and Froggy Art of Swimming” to Fraser's Magazine he called himself Sir Julius Cutwater: a satirical biography of Van Ambergh the lion-tamer purported to be by a New York hardware...