Adventures of a Brownie as Told to my Child

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826 to 1887) was an English novelist, best known for her novel John Halifax, Gentleman. She also wrote a good deal for children, and Adventures of a Brownie, published in 1872, is among the most charming examples. The subtitle tells you the form: these are stories told to a child, and you can hear the storyteller's voice in the way events are set out, with a direct, friendly address and a sense of delight in small domestic detail.

The brownie of folklore is a helpful household sprite, usually unseen, who does chores at night and is easily offended. Craik takes that figure and puts him in an ordinary Victorian home, where his habits meet the routines of cooks, farm workers and children. The episodes are self-contained, so you can listen to them one at a time: the cook's kitchen, a cherry tree, the farmyard, a ride, a day on the ice, and finally the household's clothes.

The recording runs to about one hour and fifty minutes across six chapters, read by four LibriVox volunteers. Their different voices suit a book that is, at heart, a succession of small scenes. It is a pleasant discovery for parents looking for something old-fashioned but not dull, and for anyone curious about how nineteenth-century writers adapted folk belief for the nursery. The humor is mild, the stakes are low, and the affection for children is evident on every page. Because the chapters stand on their own, you can stop after any of them and pick the story up again whenever you like, which is exactly how such tales were once shared in the nursery. The book also offers a glimpse of how a Victorian household was organized, with its kitchen, its cellar and its seasonal routines.