Rose Amy Fyleman (née Feilmann, 6 March 1877 – 1 August 1957) was an English writer and poet, noted for her works on fairies for children. Her 1917 poem "There are fairies at the bottom of our garden" was set to music by English composer Liza Lehmann.
Rose Fyleman was born in Nottingham on 6 March 1877, the third child of John Feilmann and his wife, Emilie, née Loewenstein, who was of Russian extraction. Her father was in the lace trade, and his Jewish family originated in 1860 from Jever in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, currently Lower Saxony, Germany.
As a young girl, Fyleman was educated at a private school, and at the age of nine first saw one of her compositions published in a local paper. Although she entered University College, Nottingham, she failed in the intermediate and was thus unable to pursue her ambition of becoming a schoolteacher. Despite this, Fyleman had a good singing voice, and therefore decided to study music. She studied singing in Paris, Berlin and finally at the Royal College of Music in London, where she received her diploma as associate of the Royal College of Music. She returned to Nottingham shortly afterward, where she taught singing and helped in her sister's school. With other members of her family, she anglicised the spelling of her name at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
When she was forty, Fyleman sent her verses to Punch magazine and her first publication "There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden" appeared in May 1917. The immense response from publishers prompted Fyleman to submit several other fairy poems. Her verses enjoyed tremendous success among readers and her first collection Fairies and Chimneys (1918) was reprinted more than twenty times over the next decade. During the 1920s and early 1930s Rose Fyleman published multiple verse collections, wrote drama for children, and for two years, edited the children's magazine Merry-Go-Round. She asked fellow Punch contributor, A. A. Milne, for some verses for her children's magazine; these verses would be collected in his When We Were Very Young (1924). A Princess Comes to Our Town (1927), in which a fairy princess visits the sights of contemporary Nottingham with the author, was republished by Five Leaves in 2023, with an introduction by Nottingham author, Rowena Edlin-White.
Rose Fyleman was one of the most successful children's writers of her generation and she saw much of her earlier poetry become proverbial. Fyleman was also a skilled linguist who translated books from German, French and Italian, including the Bibi children's stories of Danish writer Karin Michaëlis. Her carol "Lift your hidden faces", set to a French carol tune, was included in the Anglican hymnal Songs of Praise (1925), The Oxford Book of Carols (1928) as well as in the Hutterites' Songs of Light (1977).
She died at a nursing home in St Albans, Hertfordshire, on 1 August 1957.
In December 1929, Rose Fyleman was invited to Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, as the guest speaker at a couple of women's clubs. While staying at the Fort Garry Hotel, Fyleman and the president of one of the clubs took a stroll to the Manitoba Parliament Building, so that she could view the statue of Queen Victoria. Fyleman was inspired to write a poem entitled "Winnipeg at Christmas".
The poem appeared in print on New Year's Day, 1930 in Punch. This poem is familiar to many inhabitants of Winnipeg, who were first exposed to it in school, and it is often cited during the Christmas season. Fred Penner, a children's entertainer from Winnipeg, included it on his 1990 recording for Christmas, entitled The Season. In 2018 The Winnipeg Singers, a choir from Winnipeg, commissioned Michael A. McKay to write a choral setting of the poem and premiered it in their 2018 Christmas concert, "In Winnipeg It's Christmas".
The Rainbow Cat and Other Stories, illustrations by Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor, Methuen (London, England), 1922, Doran (New York, NY), 1923.
Forty Good-Night Tales, illustrations by Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor, Methuen (London, England), 1923, Doran (New York, NY), 1924.
The Adventure Club, illustrations by A. H. Watson, Methuen (London, England), 1925, Doran (New York, NY), 1926.
Letty: A Study of a Child, illustrations by Lisl Hummel, Methuen (London, England), 1926, Doran (New York, NY), 1927.
Forty Good-Morning Tales, Methuen (London, England), 1926, Doran (New York, NY), 1929.
Twenty Tea-Time Tales, Methuen (London, England), 1929, published as Tea Time Tales, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1930.
The Dolls' House, illustrations by Margaret Tempest, Methuen (London, England), 1930, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1931.
The Katy Kruse Play Book, illustrations by Katy Kruse, McKay (Philadelphia, PA), 1930.
The Strange Adventures of Captain Marwhopple, illustrations by Gertrude Lindsay, Methuen (London, England), 1931, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1932.
The Easter Hare, and Other Stories, illustrations by Decie Merwin, Methuen (London, England), 1932.