Bad News from the 19th Century

No, not the Church again, but the writings of children's author Favell Lee Mortimer, author of Reading without Tears, The Peep of the Day, and the Far Off books, the last of which are about to be republished in one volume.

Peep of the Day was once described by New Yorker magazine as "one of the most outspokenly sadistic children's books ever written."

Here's a sample of Mrs. Mortimer's work:

"How kind of God it was to give you a body! I hope that your body will not get hurt.

Will your bones break?--Yes, they would, if you were to fall down from a high place, or if a car were to go over them...

How easy it would be to hurt your poor little body!

If it were to fall into the fire, it would be burned up...

If a great knife were run through your body, the blood would come out.

If a great box were to fall on your head, your head would be crushed.

If you were to fall out of the window, your neck would be broken.

If you were not to eat some food for a few days, your little body would be very sick, your breath would stop, and you would grow cold, and you would soon be dead."


The Far Off books are stunningly xenophobic volumes for children about foreign lands, lands which, apparently, Mortimer never visited: The Irish are friendly unless you annoy them in which case they become very irate, nothing gets done properly in Sweden, German women don't read books, the Portuguese are only slightly less lazy than the Spanish, and so on. A must-read.


Check out the samples here from Reading without Tears. They're just brilliant. You can download the text at Project Gutenberg here.

Just the thing to keep you smiling on a Friday afternoon.