Back in her room, the little woman refuses to be fed and refuses to cooperate, and Maria takes her to her only friend (besides the Cook): the Professor, an aging Latin scholar. Fascinated, she picks the little woman up and decides to take her home, as sort of a doll, despite the fierce resistance in the form of tiny pinpricks from a tiny man. She goes ashore, and with difficulty reaches a structure (a folly) on the island, and while poking around she sees a tiny person. One day while the Vicar and Miss Brown are malingering (a common event) she takes advantage of her freedom to take a boat on one of the little lakes or ponds on the estate, and comes to a tiny island. The two of them are conspiring to steal Maria's inheritance and in the mean time are abusive, and are embezzling from her. She is an orphan, and her guardians are an extremely unpleasant pair, Miss Brown and the Vicar. The story concerns Maria, a 10 year old girl living on a decaying estate, Malplaquet, in Northamptonshire. (I called this an 'Old Bestseller Review' - I doubt this was a true bestseller, but I think it was very well-received from the beginning.) 1946.' The illustrations are by Fritz Eichenberg.

(Not that that is impressive - the same book in the same condition runs about $10 at Abebooks.) It is inscribed 'Vera and Gene Brown. My copy of Mistress Masham's Repose appears to be a true first edition. There is a pendant, The Book of Merlyn, written in 1941 but not published until 1977.) ( The Once and Future King was published in full in 1958, with the first and second sections much revised (and the second retitled The Queen of Air and Darkness) and new fourth section added, The Candle in the Wind. It was first published in the US in 1946, and the next year came out in the UK.

But he wrote a great deal, including two science fiction novels in the 1930s ( Earth Stopped and Gone to Ground.) He wrote the first three parts of The Once and Future King ( The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood, and The Ill-Made Knight) in the late '30s and early '40s, but just after the war he produced this delightful children's book, Mistress Masham's Repose. White (1906-1964) is of course primarily - almost exclusively - remembered for The Once and Future King, his brilliant tetralogy (or single novel) aboout King Arthur. Old Bestseller Review: Mistress Masham's Repose, by T.

Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White