Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative study of how the Victorians used books, portraits, fairies, microscopes, and dollhouses to imagine miniature worlds beyond perception.
Trade Review“Forsberg's book is impressive in its scope, cutting across disciplines--science, the book arts, art history, children's play, and literature--and incorporating both canonical and little-known works….The miniature will no longer be easy to overlook.”—Catherine J. Golden,
Review 19“Forsberg’s account of small-scale existence—from paintings and dolls to miniature books and even microscope induced fairies—provides a new angle on the practices of Victorian world making.”—Philipp Erchinger, University of Dusseldorf
“There is no other study that so effectively brings together art, science, and literature, objects from popular culture for both children and adults, and a wide range of ephemera.”—Janice Carlisle, Yale University
“Made in the era of an ever-expanding empire and ever-lengthening books, Victorian miniatures charm and baffle in equal measure. Laura Forsberg uses these tiny objects to answer big questions – about childhood, about book history, and about literature itself.”—Leah Price, author of
How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain“In this engrossing and deeply researched literary and cultural history, Laura Forsberg persuasively demonstrates how the “miniature”– from scientific investigation to art, fiction, and childhood play– served throughout the Victorian period as a crucial portal to imagined worlds.”— Ivan Kreilkamp, author of
Minor Creatures: Persons, Animals, and the Victorian Novel
