Margaret Mahy: Librarian of Babel

Abstract

This article conducts a reading of Margaret Mahy’s fiction in the light of her dual professions of children's writer and librarian, a discussion executed through the prism of the writings of another writer-librarian, Jorge Luis Borges. The complex interdependence of the need for 'orderly containment' and the impulse to resist linguistic and imaginative constraints are examined in the light of both writers' work.