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“She flings her elfin dreams of mystery”: The Child-Poet Gwen Cope in the Land of “Australian Faery,” 1931–1939
- Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 51, Number 1, January 2013
- pp. 20-30
- 10.1353/bkb.2013.0002
- Article
- Additional Information
Gwen Cope enjoyed a significant reputation as a gifted Australian child-poet throughout the 1930s. Nevertheless, her two collections remain unacknowledged in the history of Australian literature despite their popularity. This article situates Cope’s fairy-poetry against the ideological backdrop defined by adult fairy-poets of the 1930s to reveal fundamental discords between the child-poet writing her vision of fairy-folklore and the canonical writers who aimed to re-conceptualize “ faery-lore” in the interests of Australian national literature.