ABSTRACT
Although I’ve focused so far on the way academic critics construct feminist traditions in children’s literature, I’m mindful of the ways authors living through the second wave of feminism are changing what we read. Author Ursula Le Guin chronicles the change most dramatically. In Earthsea Revisioned (1993), the published version of lecture she gave in Oxford in 1992, Le Guin records the influence of gender politics on her Earthsea quartet. The first three Earthsea novels published between 1968 and 1972, are in the genre of the traditional heroic fantasy, something Le Guin defines as ‘a male preserve: a sort of great game-park where Beowulf feasts with Teddy Roosevelt, and Robin Hood goes hunting with Mowgli, and the cowboy rides off into the sunset alone’ (Le Guin 1993:5).
