This year marks the 100th anniversary of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, the largest and most famous Dolls’ House in the world, which has been on display for visitors to Windsor Castle since its creation.

The Dolls’ House was built between 1921 and 1924 as a gift from the nation to Queen Mary following the First World War. It is a perfect 1:12 scale replica of an Edwardian-style residence – complete with electricity, working lifts and running water – and is filled with contributions from over 1,500 of the finest artists, craftspeople, and manufacturers of the day.

One of the great treasures of the Dolls’ House is its Library, which captured the literary culture of the 1920s through miniature books handwritten by the era’s foremost writers, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Vita Sackville-West to A. A. Milne and Thomas Hardy. Now, in an anniversary initiative championed by Her Majesty The Queen, 20 tiny manuscripts have been penned and decorated by hand by leading writers and illustrators, to establish a Modern-Day Miniature Library, once again providing a snapshot of contemporary literature in Britain.

The new manuscripts range from short stories, poetry collections and illustrated tales to plays, articles and recipes, many inspired by the Dolls’ House or written specially for the occasion. Each manuscript, measuring just 4.5cm high, has been hand-bound with a unique cover by a leading designer-bookbinder. Each miniature cover is a work of art, with each binder taking inspiration from the contents of their book to create designs that range from gilded and traditional to whimsical and strikingly modern. The new books, which will become part of the Royal Collection, are now on display for visitors to Windsor Castle and can be seen throughout 2024.

One of the contributor to the Modern-Day Miniature Library is Haein Song, a Korean bookbinder based in London. She bound the Aisha woke up from troubled dreams by Elif Shafak. 

Haein Song is a fellow of Designer Bookbinders and an artist working primarily with books as her medium. She uses traditional bookbinding techniques to create unique or limited edition books, while employing a variety of printmaking methods (including linocut, drypoint, etching, cyanotype, monoprint and letterpress printing) for artist's books and for the endpapers of the fine bindings.

Haein was born in Seoul and studied BA Graphic Design at Seoul National University, South Korea. She moved to London in 2005 and graduated in MA Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. Her fine bindings and artist’s books are held in many private collections in the UK and USA, and in public collections including British Library (UK), Bodleian Libraries (UK), Wellcome Collection (UK), V&A National Art Library (UK), Library of Congress (USA), Stanford University (USA), Getty Research Institute (USA), Yale University (USA) and Harvard University (USA).

Find out more about the Queen's literary event published by the Royal website here