The men & women of Lilliput stood a good six inches in their stocking feet. Mounted on speedy rats and armored in the wing cases of beetles, they hunted mice and moles, and caught fish with horsehair. They spoke English fluently, but after the manner (somewhat corrupted) of their 18th Century creator, Jonathan Swift. They would say: "He fell Victim to intoxication, and dismounted from his Nag to seek the Safety of the Terra Firma."

These descendants of the original (Gulliver's Travels) Lilliputians are the discovery of British Author T.H. White. He has put them to good use in a book that is freakish fantasy from start to finish. Supposedly a children's book, [Mistress Masham's Repose] will entertain most adults.

Author White's colony of Lilliputians is located on a tiny lake-island in a vast English estate. The present-day heiress to the tumbledown estate is ten-year-old Maria, "one of those tough and friendly people who do things first and think about them afterward." The plot of Mistress Masham's Repose revolves around the efforts of Maria's fiendish guardians to abduct the Lilliputians and sell them to Hollywood.

The book's charm lies in Author White's nostalgic evocation of 18th Century life, his knowledge of animal and country lore (in private life he is an ardent naturalist), and his ability to make genuinely dramatic such absurdities as the thrilling rescue of Maria by the Lilliputian rat-cavalry. The best things in Mistress Masham's Repose are the mischievous parodies of human cliches-of-thought. (p. 108)