Little people in literature

Probably the first imagining of tiny people occurs in the first part of Jonathan Swift's well-known "Gulliver's Travels", where they are called 'Liliputs.' Dr. Samuel Johnson, however, was dismissive of the work, saying "when you have imagined little people, the rest follows." But Swift endows the Liliputs, with all human foibles.

Then there was the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen, "Thumbelina", where a childless woman approached a fairy, who gave her a seed to plant, out of which a flower bloomed, inside which was Thumbelina, the size of a thumb. After various travails, she meets a little man of her own size, marries him & lives happily.

The Brothers Grimm also compiled a story of "Thumbling", who was born to a poor peasant couple, who wished for a child, even as small as a thumb. After some time, he wished to help his parents & went on various adventures despite his size. He was in a mouse hole, in the stomach of a cow & even was swallowed by a wolf. He persuaded the wolf to go to his parents' house, where he called out to them to kill the wolf & rescue him. Then the threesome lived ever happily after.

But the longest works in this genre are the "Borrowers" series of Mary Norton. These are parasitical, tiny beings living in inhabited houses, subsisting on crumbs & leftovers. After the introductory book, they go afield, afloat, aloft & are avenged in the four subsequent volumes. Mary Norton's imagination was fired by her short-sighted peering into various nooks & corners of her house, as her problem was not detected at an early age. When her eyes were examined & spectacles prescribed, she started writing down her imaginary tiny people's adventures in detail.