[Gutenberg 39122] • Memoirs of a Midget

Miss M., the narrator of these fictional memoirs, is a diminutive young woman (though just how diminutive, the author never says) with a “passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals.” Miss M. tells of her early life as a dreamy orphan and, in particular, of her tempestuous twentieth year—in which she falls in love with a beautiful and ambitious full-sized woman and is courted by a male dwarf. Concluding that she must choose either to simply tolerate her difference or grow callous to it, Miss M. resolves to become independent by offering herself up as a spectacle in a circus.

[ **Walter de la Mare**  (1873–1956) wrote numerous novels, short stories, essays, and poems. He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for *Memoirs of a Midget*. Other major works include the children’s novel, *The Three Royal Monkeys* ,  *Henry Brocken* , *The Return* , and *Desert Islands*.]

[ **Alison Lurie** is the author of many highly praised novels as well as two collections of essays on children’s literature, *Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups* and *Boys and Girls Forever*. She has taught children’s literature and folklore at Cornell University.]