Book Review: The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale by Caroline Sumpter. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Focusing on one of the most defining features of the 1890s, the emergence of little magazines such as the Dome, Venture, Butterfly, Pageant, Qiiest and Quarto, Sumpter shows how the fairy tale was reclaimed for both the avant-garde and folk culture and put to the service of both decadent and anti-decadent artistic discourse, as well as nationalist and counter- cultural identity formation. Concentrating on the work of Laurence Housman-poet, book-artist, illustrator, journalist, socialist, feminist and gay activist-Sumpter shows how the fairy tales he published in little magazines can be read intertextually within a wider periodical context engaged in challenging received assump- tions about gender, sexuality, the body and human social relations. Caroline Sumpter's award-winning book should be added to the bookshelf of every student interested in media history and the history of reading, Victorian literature and culture and that endlessly fascinating, ever-changing object of study, the fairy tale.