Much Victorian work for children addresses its audience in special way, talking down to it. Paradoxically, what strikes modern reader as dated rhetoric may explain power of works that for more than half were ranked as classics. The intri- cately interwoven features of what I term auntly (or avuncu- lar) voice establish special relationship to audience in works that were once widely read, ranging from Mrs. Molesworth's Cuckoo Clock (1877) to Charles Kingsley's Water Babies (1863) and W. M. Thackeray's Rose and Ring (1855). As any one of these texts can show, children's literature employs broad array of rhetorical strategies to ensure readers' or listeners' sense of relaxation, equality, and creative—even conspiratorial—involvement. Mrs. Molesworth (1839-1921), the last great writer of fantasy in nineteenth century (Ellis 121), was prodigiously prolific author whose name dominated children's for some thirty years, at end of last and beginning of this (Avery, Introduction 9). As late as 1938 popular novel could as- sume that its audience would agree that her first work of juvenile fantasy, The Cuckoo Clock (1877), was a classic (Spring 147). It tells tale of lonely little girl called Griselda, who lives with her two great-aunts in an old house and is taken on series of four dream- adventures by one of household gods, wooden cuckoo out of European clock. The cuckoo becomes her mentor, teaching her such virtues as obedience and good temper. At end, Gris- elda acquires new friends: little boy, Phil, and his understanding mother. Today, despite Roger Lancelyn Green's chapters in Tellers of Tales and Mrs. Molesworth and her secure place in literary histories, Mrs. Molesworth is not much discussed. My aim here, besides drawing attention to an author whose books and reputation have suffered an unjust eclipse (Salway 520), is to explore variety and in- ChiUren's Literature 17, ed. Francelia Butler, Margaret Higonnet, and Barbara Rosen (Yale University Press, © 1989 by The Children's Literature Foundation, Inc.).