When London meets Japan

The author Douglas Sladen - writer of the May 1895 Windsor Magazine piece "Odd Scenes in Japanese Streets" - rang bells, though I've never written about him on JSBlog. It eventually dawned on me that I'd mentioned him in A Wren-like Note as a neighbour of Maxwell Gray after she moved to Richmond.

The gumnut babies

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography tells how Avis Acres' mid-1950s Hutu and Kawa mythos was inspired by the earlier "gumnut babies" of the Australian author and illustrator May Gibbs.  There's a good BibliOdyssey post from 2008 - Snugglepot and Cuddlepie - with examples of Gibbs' work.