From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Books are the nicest present of all! One of my Birthday books is called, “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.” It is about a little girl who is always losing her temper, and sometimes she can’t find it, and then has to go out into the woods to look for it. The woods are very scary, especially at night.
“The Castle of Grumpy Grouch” was written by Mary Dickerson Donahey (aka Mary Augusta Dickerson) and was first published in 1907. The fairy tale was reissued in 1948 and reviewed by Ellen Lewis Buell in the New York Times on June 20: “…this tale combines make-believe and moral in the true Victorian manner. The peppery Princess Floria believed that if she lost her temper altogether she would be a much nicer person….So she started out to reclaim her disposition from the Castle of Sulks where the Giant Grumpy Grouch kept lost tempers in durance vile.”