de la Mare, Walter
de la Mare, Walter (1873–1956),English poet and writer. All de la Mare's short stories and longer prose works are touched with mystery, if not fantasy. The two recurrent themes are the child's vision of the world, and death; the usual setting is an unspecified candle‐lit, horse‐drawn age; houses are old, many‐roomed and have secrets. The characters often seem to have strayed from another world, or to be in close contact with it, and many of his stories touch on ghostly visitations. Though his verse often deals with conventional fairy matters—witches on broomsticks, fairy dancers, elves, will‐o'‐the‐wisps, he is far more oblique in his fiction. In Memoirs of a Midget (1921), for instance, Miss M, whose size is never specified though at a late stage we are told that she is barely taller than a book, seems more like Andersen's Thumbelina than a human, and the...
[The entire page is 1054 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
