The author, Palmer Cox, was born in Canada in 1840. He wrote sixteen books about Brownies. The Brownies were very popular. Each book would have a set of poems about these little people. The Brownies had various adventures. Each poem reflects some aspect of life back a hundred years ago. The brownies go to a school, visit the circus, go ice skating and so on. These books were published in the late 1800s to early 1900s.