Mary De Morgan

Born in London in 1850, Mary De Morgan grew up in an unusually intellectual and reform-minded family. Her father was the mathematician Augustus De Morgan, and her mother, Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, was active in causes including women's rights. That background helped shape both Mary's independent outlook and the humane, questioning spirit of her fiction.

She is remembered chiefly for three collections of literary fairy tales: On a Pincushion (1877), The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde (1880), and The Windfairies (1900). Her stories often use the magic and wonder of fairy tale to challenge greed, vanity, cruelty, and rigid social rules, which gives them a distinctive tone among Victorian fantasies.

De Morgan was also involved in education and women's suffrage, and later in life worked in Egypt, where she died in 1907. Though she was less famous than some of her contemporaries, her fairy tales have continued to attract readers for their charm, strangeness, and quietly radical heart.