Mopsa the Fairy

Mopsa the Fairy

Jean Ingelow may be said to have begun her study of the art of writing child-rhymes and the tales that are akin to them under Jane and Ann Taylor. A friendship had sprung up between the families at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, where the Ingelow youngsters used to stay; and Greedy Dick and Mrs. Duck, the notorious glutton, were among their favourite characters. In her first book, however, Jean Ingelow showed that she had a note and a child-fantasy of her own. They are seen in her fairy-ballad of Mimie and of the forest where the child-fairy lived: Her earliest impressions are reflected in some lines found in Mopsa, which tell of a ship coming up the river with a jolly gang of towing men. She was born at Boston, Lincolnshire, on the 17th of March 1820; the daughter of a banker who had married a Scottish wife, Jean Kilgour. Her grandfather owned some of the ships that came up the Boston water; and the scenery of that fen country entered into her inner mind. Her fine ballad, High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, was one outcome of those early days. In middle life she came to live in London, and she wrote of the city and its shifting and unending throng; but her best pages are those, whether verse or prose, that reflect the things of the seashore and waterside, the empty sky,[Pg viii] the world of heather, which she knew as a child in Lincolnshire and Essex. Ipswich, Filey Brig in Yorkshire, and other places are to be counted in her own history; and some of the memories that are a picture of her early days may be found in her long story Off the Skelligs, where she sketches her birthplace, and the house by the wharves, with a room in the rooftree overlooking the ships and a long reach of the river. Jean Ingelow died in Kensington in 1897; and a memorial brass is to be seen bearing her name in the church of St. Barnabas there. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67087
Author: Ingelow, Jean
Release Date: Jan 3, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: J. M. Dent & Sons
Publication Date: 1919
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Illustrator: Curtis, Dora