Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a soldier, minister, writer, editor, and activist. His only foray into children’s writing, forgotten today, was this passionate expression of love for his niece Annie. Birthday in Fairy-Land follows a girl named Annie into a fairy kingdom of sensuous pleasures where she finds “buttercups and daffodils … [as well as] fruitful orchards of currants and raspberries.” Annie partakes in fairy pomp and ceremony, but her pleasure comes to an abrupt halt when she realizes (like Dorothy in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [1900]) that staying in fairyland would require her to abandon her earthly family. In the end, she begs to return home. This didactic but also delightful tale arrives at the following moral: “With love and duty every mortal can be happy.”

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts