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All the Way to Fairyland

All the Way to Fairyland
by Evelyn Sharp
1897

Ever so long ago, in the wonderful country of Nonamia, there lived an absent-minded magician. It is not usual, of course, for a magician to be absent-minded; but then, if it were usual it would not have happened in Nonamia. Nobody knew very much about this particular magician, for he lived in his castle in the air, and it is not easy to visit any one who lives in the air. He did not want to be visited, however; visitors always meant conversation, and he could not endure conversation. This, by the way, was not surprising, for he was so absent-minded that he always forgot the end of his sentence before he was half-way through the beginning of it; and as for his visitors' remarks—well, if he had had any visitors, he would never have heard their remarks at all. So, when some one did call on him, one day,—and that was when he had been living in his castle in the air for seven hundred and seventy-seven years and had almost forgotten who he was and why he was there,—the magician was so astonished that he could not think of anything to say. "How did you get here?" he asked at last; for even an absent-minded magician cannot remain altogether silent, when he looks out of his castle in the air and sees a Princess in a gold and silver frock, with a bright little crown on her head, floating about on a soft white cloud.

 

Evelyn Sharp (1869-1955) was the ninth of eleven children. Sharp's family sent her to a boarding schooling for two years, yet she successfully passed several university local examinations. She moved to London in 1894 against the wishes of her family where she wrote and published several novels including All the Way to Fairyland (1897) and The Other Side of the Sun (1900). In 1903 Sharp, with the help of her friend and lover, Henry Nevinson, began to find work writing articles for the Daily Chronicle, the Pall Mall Gazette and the Manchester Guardian. She highlighted the importance of Nevinson and the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. Sharp's journalism made her more aware of the problems of working- class women and she joined the Women's Industrial Council and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Unlike most members of the women's movement, Sharp was unwilling to end the campaign for the vote during the First World War. When she continued to refuse to pay income tax she was arrested and all of her property confiscated, including her typewriter.

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