Between 1921 and 1924, many of Britain and Ireland's most significant writers contributed handwritten books to the miniature library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House. The collection of tiny manuscripts was organised by Princess Marie Louise, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the writer E.V. Lucas.

One of the treasures of the Dolls’ House Library is this fairy tale by C. Kenneth Bird, a cartoonist who signed himself ‘Fougasse’, which he took from the name of a First World War mine. Fougasse is also known for the ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ series of posters, which reminded Britons living through the Second World War that they should be careful what they discuss for fear of being overheard by spies.

Fougasse’s Dolls’ House manuscript, ‘J. Smith’, is about a fairy who is blown to London by a storm. He decides to pretend to be a human boy to see how well his fairy talents, considered mediocre in Fairyland, will be received. The lively verse is illustrated in Fougasse’s distinctive, bright style, with the text and images skilfully combined. Despite Fougasse modestly writing to Princess Marie Louise that he found the small size of the book disconcerting, his manuscript is perhaps the most outstanding of the twentieth-century contributions to the Dolls’ House Library.

The manuscript was bound in vellum with gold-tooled decoration by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, one of the foremost craft binderies of the early twentieth century. They painted tiny, colourful fairies on to the book’s covers, skilfully reflecting the illustrations within.