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The Story of Honey and Sunny
[edit]All the Way to Fairyland (1897)
Summary
[edit]"The Story of Honey and Sunny" is a fairy tale in which there was a King who desired everything to be completely quiet. He thought his wife and baby daughter were too loud, so he sent them to a village far away, where no one knew they were a Queen and Princess. Soon enough, the silence of the King's court spread over the entire country, and even the birds were forbidden to chirp. The sun stopped shining, and everyone was very sad.
On the contrary, the Princess was growing up in the jolliest country of all, where the sun shone every minute and everyone talked all the time. The Princess, who everyone called Sunny, had no idea she was a princess, and no one in her village knew either. She was called Sunny because she could look into the sun without blinking. Sunny spent many afternoons with the gardener's son Honey, telling him stories about finding her prince. Sunny soon decided to go out into the world to do just that, but before she left, Honey taught her a song to sing if she was ever in trouble.
One day as she was walking through the wood, Sunny noticed that everything was silent. She met an old man who told her if she didn't stop making noise, she would be banished from the country. The old man explained: "Nobody ever is happy in this country. Nobody ever has been happy since the King was bewitched and the sun went away in a temper, and that was sixteen years ago. Nobody ever will be happy again, unless the spell is broken; and the spell cannot be broken until a Princess of the royal blood comes this way, without knowing that she is a Princess. "
The old man found out that Sunny could look at the sun without blinking, and began sobbing. He told her to run to the King's palace. Sunny ran the whole way there, and upon entering the King's chamber, she began laughing and laughing. Her laughing was contagious, and soon everyone in the country was laughing, and even the sun came out. The Queen then arrived and explained that Sunny was the Princess.
The King introduced her to a great many Princes, but Sunny thought only of Honey. She sang the song he taught her, and 3 days later Honey arrived at the King's palace. Sunny decided she didn't want to stay in the palace, so she and Honey got married, returned to their village and lived happily ever after.
Publication
[edit]
"The Story of Honey and Sunny" [1] was first published in 1897 by John Lane in All the Way to Fairyland Fairy Stories. First Edition. by Evelyn Sharp. The illustrations are by Mrs. Percy Dearmer.
Author
[edit]The author is Evelyn Sharp [2]. She was born in Denmark Hill, London, on August 4th, 1869. Evelyn Sharp was the ninth of eleven children of John James and Jane Sharp. Evelyn Sharp attended school in London for 3 years, and then attended The College de France beginning in 1890. She wrote over 20 books and 100 short stories, in which she aimed to treat children as creative, intelligent beings. Her fairy stories and schoolgirl tales were neither patronizing nor moralistic, though they reflect her own increasingly progressive views on gender, class, internationalism, and peace.
Evelyn Sharp became a suffragette in 1906, after hearing a speech given by Elizabeth Robins. During the war, Evelyn edited the women's suffrage journal, Votes for Women. She married Henry Woodd Nevinson on January 18th, 1933, when she was well into her sixties, and Henry was 75. Evelyn Sharp died June 17th, 1955, in a nursing home in London.