Mrs Musgrave *A Little Hero* (1887)
Aug. 21st, 2020 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamI reread Mrs Musgrave's *A Little Hero* (1887). I own it because my grandfather won it a a Sunday school prize in 1933 at Kangaroo Gully.
It's a slight story. The hero leaves India as a child as the climate is not good for his health; he stays with relatives and is falsely believed to have broken his word not to go boating; the truth is discovered - it was really his cousin; his mother comes back and dies in his arms; as an adult he becomes a soldier.
It belongs to that school of children's literature that assumes that the sun will never set on the empire.
But about the author I can find nothing.
Mrs Musgrave has no wiki. A google search does not find her. She is not in the Oxford Companion to English Literature or the Feminist Companion to Literature. She is unknown to the Guide to Children's Literature. (I keep these readily to hand).
Even Amazon does her the disservice of having a review for a different novel attached to her work.
Aside from her initial (H) and the fact that she wrote some other novels. She was published by Blackie who imprinted in London. This was typical of Australian books until after the war. Even Australian authors sent the ms to the UK to be printed and sent back.
It's a slight story. The hero leaves India as a child as the climate is not good for his health; he stays with relatives and is falsely believed to have broken his word not to go boating; the truth is discovered - it was really his cousin; his mother comes back and dies in his arms; as an adult he becomes a soldier.
It belongs to that school of children's literature that assumes that the sun will never set on the empire.
But about the author I can find nothing.
Mrs Musgrave has no wiki. A google search does not find her. She is not in the Oxford Companion to English Literature or the Feminist Companion to Literature. She is unknown to the Guide to Children's Literature. (I keep these readily to hand).
Even Amazon does her the disservice of having a review for a different novel attached to her work.
Aside from her initial (H) and the fact that she wrote some other novels. She was published by Blackie who imprinted in London. This was typical of Australian books until after the war. Even Australian authors sent the ms to the UK to be printed and sent back.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:46 pm (UTC)That is fascinating, I had no idea that was typical. I hope there is more information about her, somewhere!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-22 01:06 am (UTC)