Hot off the Project Gutenberg Presses: The Barbarous Babes!

[landofnowhere]

The Barbarous Babes: being the Memoirs of Molly by Edith Ayrton Zangwill is now freely available on Project Gutenberg! Thanks to kurowasan for scanning the book and the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders for all their work m

This is Edith Ayrton Zangwill's first published book from 1904, an episodic children's book that reminds me of E. Nesbit's non-fantastic fiction. Molly is a relatable protagonist with an engaging narrative voice that sucked me in instantly. I reviewed it in a bit more detail here.

Comments

[luzula]

I suspect the word "babes" did not have quite the same connotations then! I mean, I am seeing a group of busty women in full barbarian leather gear and swords a la Xena, but that is PROBABLY not what she means... *g* I'm guessing babes = children here.

[landofnowhere]

Indeed :-) The children aren't all that barbarous either, though they do like imaginative play games with violent themes.

[kurowasan]

What I find interesting is that, having started out publishing a collection of children’s stories, Edith Ayrton Zangwill was able to pivot to “The First Mrs. Mollivar”, a novel for adults, a year later. I think this would be much more difficult for new authors to pull off in today’s publishing industry.

I’m happy to report that both “Mollivar” (1905) and “Teresa” (1909) are moving through the proofreading process for PG. I expect to have “The Rise of a Star” prepped and ready for proofreading in the next month or so and will plan to scan two more novels by this author in January or February. I will keep you posted!

[landofnowhere]

Woohoo!

[landofnowhere]

I think part of it was maybe that children's literature was less of a distinct genre back then? It's not just that she follows up Babes with Mollivar, but that Mollivar is advertised as being by the author of Babes. And this is definitely the sort of children's book with crossover adult appeal. But on the other hand a few of the Babes stories were published in Little Folks, which was definitely a magazine for children.