In the final pronouncement of his most successful fairy story for children, Tinykin's Transformations (1869), Mark Lemon confides to his young audience, "The fairies are said to have left us for good and aye; but there are some pretty creatures as beautiful as the fairies could possibly have been, often to be seen haunting the margin of Katrine Lake in Tilgate Forest, and playing under the green oaks of Brantridge Park." In so saying, this imaginative author, refusing to abandon the tenants of the fairy realm, fused the possibilities of fancy with the realistic British landscape, thus creating a vivid and fantastic excursion that had about it the ring of veracity. The communication of realism and imagination via the vehicles of drama, poetry, novel, fairy tale, lighthearted farce, and extravaganza were to characterize Lemon's prolific literary output.

Lemon was born on 30 November 1809 into the middle-class London home of Alice...