Mary Norton’s ‘The Borrowers’ Series and the Myth of the Paternalist Past

[para. 1]: "Contemporary reviewers of Mary Norton's "Borrowers" series, published between 1953 and 1982, often expressed the desire to see her work placed alongside the "classics" of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century children's fantasy. 1 While evoking the "golden age" is a fairly standard way of praising children's books, it is, in the case of Norton, particularly revealing, as she is an author clearly invested in representing, cherishing, and preserving a certain vision of the past. Many critics, including Lois Kuznets, Caroline Hunt, and Patricia Pace, have remarked on the "conservative hankering after the past" that characterizes Norton's work (Hunt 125)."