Bunchy: The uncanny side of Milly-Molly-Mandy

Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy stories idealise country living in England in the 1920s. Her Bunchy stories are, by contrast, unnerving fantasies, reflecting Bunchy’s isolation as a lonely orphan. In this talk, Dr Kathryn Walls explores the contrasts in these popular stories.

Contrasting the characters of Milly-Molly-Mandy and Bunchy
Bunchy and Milly-Molly-Mandy are the creations of English author Joyce Lankester Brisley. The girls live in the same village, but they are completely contrasting characters. Milly-Molly-Mandy, who lives in ‘the nice white cottage with the thatched roof’, has numerous relatives and friends, while Bunchy is an orphan dependent on her imagination for company.

Emeritus Professor Kathryn Walls will explore the contrasts in the characters of Milly-Molly-Mandy and Bunchy in these much-loved books.

Joyce Lankester Brisley was born in 1896 and published her first novel Hurrah for the Trains in 1919. But she is best known for her Milly-Molly-Mandy stories, which have remained popular, and in print, since they were first published between 1928 and 1967. Two Bunchy books were published in 1937 and 1951.

About the speaker
Dr Kathryn Walls is Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests are broad. She has published the areas of Middle English literature (Chaucer, Langland, the mystery plays), Renaissance allegory, the Reformation and early modern literature, and literature and science.

Kathryn has an abiding interest in the New Zealand children's writers Margaret Mahy and Maurice Gee, and in children’s literature in general. She has been a member of the Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection committee since 2015.