Women, Enlightenment and the Literary Fairy Tale in English

In eighteenth-century England the literary fairy tale was known mainly through translation from the French, especially of the works of Marie-Catherine, Comtesse d'Aulnoy. There were, however, several indigenous efforts at the form, including the two fairy tales in Sarah Fielding's The Governess (1749) and The Fairy-Ring, or Emeline (1783), by Elizabeth Sheridan. Particularly identified with the female reader, the literary fairy tale was also hospitable to women writers. Appealing to the imagination through their fantastic and marvellous elements, the fairy tales of Fielding and Sheridan are also concerned with the exertions of female reason and the foundations of female autonomy.