The Miniaturists

Description

In The Miniaturists Barbara Browning explores her attraction to tininess and the stories of those who share it. Interweaving autobiography with research on unexpected topics and letting her voracious curiosity guide her, Browning offers a series of charming short essays that plumb what it means to ponder the minuscule. She is as entranced by early twentieth-century entomologist William Morton Wheeler, who imagined corresponding with termites, as she is by Frances Glessner Lee, the “mother of forensic science,” who built intricate dollhouses to solve crimes. Whether examining Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the Schoenhut toy piano dynasty, portrait miniatures, diminutive handwriting, or Jonathan Swift’s and Lewis Carroll’s preoccupation with tiny people, Browning shows how a preoccupation with all things tiny can belie an attempt to grasp vast---even cosmic---realities. project_muse_103366-3252082 10.1515_9781478023548 Contents Foibles of Insects and Men The Mother of Forensic Science Dilation and Contraction Suite for Toy Piano Gulliver Phantasies The Handwriting on the Wall Lead Paint and Other Poisons That Which Is More Proportionable to the Smallness of My Abilities Works Cited or Obliquely Referenced