Nurse Lugton grew tired of sewing the curtain and fell asleep. The animals decorating the fabric began to stir and leap, important noblemen strode along the folds, and an old queen rode by in a palanquin. Life is in full swing across the vast blue curtain while the frightening giantess with the golden thimble sleeps sweetly...

In September 1924, Ann Stephen — daughter of Adrian, Virginia's brother — was visiting the Woolfs' home in Rodmell. The writer was just finishing her fourth novel, Mrs Dalloway, but to entertain her niece, she briefly set aside her work and composed a short fairy tale about a seamstress nanny, the bright country of her dreams, and the enterprising inhabitants of that land. Forty years later, the sheet of paper on which Woolf had written the story was discovered in the Mrs Dalloway manuscript in the British Museum archive.

And now this tale has finally been published in Russian — with stunning illustrations by Ivan Sergeev.