Novel
The Corn King and the Spring Queen
Naomi Mitchison · 1931
Synopsis
Marob, a small kingdom on the shore of the Black Sea, in the third century BC. Erif Der has been married by her father to King Tarrik in order to bewitch him: she is the Spring Queen, he is the Corn King, and the harvest depends on their rites. Their fortunes turn badly and both leave the country. They go to Sparta, where a young king tries to abolish debts and redistribute land, then to Egypt. Erif learns that elsewhere the gestures that make the grain grow in her country have no effect at all.
Context
The volume appeared in 1931 and runs to more than seven hundred pages. It was written by a woman of thirty who had studied biology and read Frazer: fertility rites are treated in it as a technique, with the exactness one would bring to describing an agricultural process, and the reader is never invited to smile. Cleomenes' Sparta, where an attempt is made to redistribute the land, serves as a political counterpoint to the magic of the small kingdom. Some have read in it a book about revolution and others a book about women's bodies; it is both.
Who it is for
Seven hundred pages in English, never translated. The opening is difficult: one must accept some thirty pages without bearings before the world holds together.
Prizes and reception
The only one of her books still being reissued, and the one through which she is read today.