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Libra Esoterica

The water-babies: a fairy tale for a land-baby

a fairy tale for a land baby

Also known as The water-babies

by Charles Kingsley, Warwick Goble (Illustrator), Linley Sambourne & Jessie Willcox Smith (Illustrator)

  • First published:
  • 19th century
  • Language: English
  • Content type: FictionJuvenilePrimary source
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Description

Description from Project Gutenberg (opens in a new tab)

"The Water-Babies" by Charles Kingsley is a children's novel written in 1862–1863. When young chimney sweep Tom falls into a river and transforms into a "water-baby," he begins a moral education in an underwater world. Guided by mystical fairies with peculiar names, Tom embarks on adventures alongside other water-babies, learning lessons about right and wrong. His journey includes reuniting with Ellie, an upper-class girl, and confronting his cruel former master. This Victorian fairy tale blends Christian redemption with social critique and satirical support for Darwin's evolutionary theories. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Ancient religions, animism, and ritual, Legendary beings and transformations, and Mythology, folklore, and sacred legends.

  • Legendary beings and transformations

    Controlled discovery queries from openlibrary and openlibrary-historical matched “Fairies”. Retained metadata contains “Fairies” in the description and “Fairies” in the subject metadata.

    • “Fairies”· via Open Library
    • “Fairies”· in description
    • “Fairies”· in subject
  • Mythology, folklore, and sacred legends

    Controlled discovery queries from internet-archive, openlibrary-historical, and project-gutenberg matched “fairy tale”, “Fairy tales”, “Tales”, and 1 additional term(s). Retained metadata contains “fairy tale” in the title, “fairy tale” in the subtitle, “fairy tale” in the description, and 4 additional metadata match(es).

    • “Fairy tales”· via Internet Archive
    • “Tales”· via Internet Archive
    • “Fairy tales”· via Open Library
    • “Tales”· via Open Library
    • “fairy tale”· via Project Gutenberg
    • “tales”· via Project Gutenberg
  • Ancient religions, animism, and ritual

    Controlled discovery queries from openlibrary-historical matched “Animism”.

    • “Animism”· via Open Library

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

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Links to ISBN 0094608202; other editions may be cheaper. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. WorldCat shows libraries near you that hold a copy.

Editions

Open Library reports 213 editions; 12 cataloged here.

The water-babies

Internet Archive unrestricted pre-1900 PDF scan

1864-01-01T00:00:00ZBoston : T.O.H.P. Burnham ; New York : O.S. Felt ...English—Public digitized item

The water-babies

Internet Archive unrestricted pre-1900 PDF scan

1894-01-01T00:00:00ZLondon : Macmillan & Co.English—Public digitized item

Internet Archive unrestricted pre-1900 PDF scan

1899-01-01T00:00:00ZPhiladelphia : H. AltemusEnglish—Public digitized item

Subjects

33 subject headings

Identifiers & provenance

How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.

Identifiers

ISBN-13
ISBN-10
LCCN
OCLC
Open Library work
Project Gutenberg
Internet Archive
Open Library work (alias)

Cataloging notes

  • Contributing institution: Information and Library Science Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Contributing institution: New York Public Library
  • Contributing institution: Smithsonian Libraries
  • Contributing institution: The Library of Congress
  • Digitization sponsor: MSN
  • Digitization sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries
  • Digitization sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Discovery required Internet Archive search metadata to report a PDF format; the exact direct-file URL is added only after the item's file listing confirms an unrestricted PDF filename.
  • Open Library reports 213 editions; this snapshot catalogs one representative edition and preserves work-level ISBN, date, and publisher aggregates.
  • Open Library reports 3 editions; this snapshot catalogs one representative edition and preserves work-level ISBN, date, and publisher aggregates.
  • Original print publication date and source edition are absent from Project Gutenberg metadata.
  • Scanner: nycs2
  • Scanner: nycs7
  • Scanner: nycs9
  • Scanner: scribe1.washingtondc.archive.org
  • Scanner: scribe10.capitolhill.archive.org
  • Scanner: scribe2.chapelhill.archive.org
Catalog id
openlibrary-work:OL1130038W
Edition coverage
Multi source partial
Retrieved