Memoirs of a Midget

	First edition
Author	Walter de la Mare
Language	English
Subject	fiction
Published	William Collins, Sons
Media type	print
Pages	528
Awards	James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction
ISBN	1846590663
	Foreword by: Alison Lurie

Published in 1921, Memoirs of a Midget is a surrealistic novel, told in the first person, by English poet, anthologist, and short story writer Walter de la Mare, best known for his tales of the uncanny and poetry for children.^[1]

^ Angela Carter, who admired the book and wrote an introduction to it, stressed the novel was not intended as a work of realism. In Memoirs of a Midget and other books of this nature, she wrote, the "play on physical scale to suggest metaphysical meaning" was "a device that fairy tales and satire have in common. ‘Actual size’ in these contexts is not, as she wrote, 'within the realm of physiological dimension; it is the physical manifestation of an enormous difference'."Rosemary Hill, "Hairy Fairies", London Review of Books 4: 14 (August 5, 1982).

[1] Angela Carter, who admired the book and wrote an introduction to it, stressed the novel was not intended as a work of realism. In Memoirs of a Midget and other books of this nature, she wrote, the "play on physical scale to suggest metaphysical meaning" was "a device that fairy tales and satire have in common. ‘Actual size’ in these contexts is not, as she wrote, 'within the realm of physiological dimension; it is the physical manifestation of an enormous difference'."Rosemary Hill, "Hairy Fairies", London Review of Books 4: 14 (August 5, 1982).

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