Maggie Browne, the pen-name of Margaret Andrewes née Hamer (1864-1937), was an English author of fiction and non-fiction children's books, who is best known today for Wanted, a King, an Alice in Wonderland-type story.
"[9] It was well received, and was described by reviewers as "a pleasantly chatty volume, not too learned",[10] in which "all manner of odds and ends of information are brought together, and the simplicity and ease of the author's narrative should make her work popular with children.
"[11] Wanted, a King, Or, How Merle Set the Nursery Rhymes to Right (1890) is the best-known of Browne's works in the 21st century, with its own entry in the second edition of The Oxford Companion of Children's Literature.
[1] As the subtitle indicates, the book features nursery rhymes and their characters, which the heroine, Merle, encounters in a place called Endom as she dreams while in bed recovering from a fall.
"[18] Some reviewers recognised it as "a clever story of the "Alice in Wonderland" type in which Miss Maggie Browne has shown a keen appreciation of the likings of children...
"[2] Instead of "adapting and acquiescing"[2] as Alice had done, "Merle is encouraged to 'Defy, Deride, Desist, Deny' ... [her] successes reveal the ways that nonsense and imagination can oppose socially imposed expectations and constraints.
To solve their perplexities, in steps Miss Maggie Browne with a most useful little Manual, 'Pleasant Work for Busy Fingers' (Cassell) which will teach restless children to make the most delightful things out of the humblest material - paper, beads clay and so forth.
Founding her volume on a German original, Miss Browne presents her subject in most practical form with numerous and diagrams likely to convince the slowest pupil.
"[21] Two Old Ladies, Two Foolish Fairies and a Tom Cat (the hardback edition of previously serialised The Surprising Adventures of Tuppy and Tue 1897) was reviewed in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, which wrote: "Children are who are lucky enough get this pretty book will rejoice in a treasure.