Rumpty-Dudget's Tower: A Fairy Tale

Rumpty-Dudget's Tower: A Fairy Tale

IN 1877, when I was living in Twickenham, near London, my sister Una happened to be describing a queer character she had met that day: she had a gift for making swift and vivid portraits in words. He was a little Rumpty-Dudget of a man, she said, concluding her description. She may have meant to say, Rumpelstiltskin, the name of a dwarf immortalised in the Grimm fairy-tales, with which we had been familiar in our childhood. But her variation struck me soundly, and I said to myself, Ill write a story about him! But, in truth, the story, upon that inspiration, wrote itself. I had a fine time with it, and my own children, to whom it was read in manuscript, heartily approved it. Then Alexander Strahan, the publisher, and the first editor of the famous Contemporary Review, saw it and xproclaimed, with many a Scottish burr, that it was a varra fine piece of worrk, my boy, and does ye credit, and he carried it off and published it in his new magazine for children. Afterward, the eminent firm of Longmans, Green and Longmans, of Paternoster Row, hard by Saint Pauls, in London, considered it and said, If you can collect half a dozen others of the same sort, we would be glad to issue them in a volume. It was easy for me, in the late 70s, to do that, though now that I am in the late seventies myself, I should beg off. So a little green-and-gold book was printed. It was called Yellow-Cap, and Other Fairy Tales, and bore the great Longmans imprint. And they sold, I believe, a great many of them; but the only story in the collection about which readers afterward wrote to me, was Rumpty-Dudgets Tower; and today, after nearly five and forty years, I still receive occasional kind words on the subject. My mischievous little dwarf manifested vitality. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62408
Author: Hawthorne, Julian
Release Date: Jun 15, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Hood, George, 1869-1949