Brownies in the Girl Guides are named after a story by which author?

Brownies in the Girl Guides are named after a story by Juliana Horatia Ewing.

Ewing was an English writer of children’s stories whose short story “The Brownies” presented brownies as helpful children rather than merely supernatural household spirits. The story first appeared in 1865 in The Monthly Packet and was later included in her 1871 collection The Brownies and Other Tales.

In Ewing’s tale, a selfish boy wants a brownie to do his chores. An owl teaches him that the real brownies are children who willingly help with household work. That idea made “brownie” a natural name for a junior branch of the Guiding movement: it suggested helpfulness, cooperation, and practical service.

The name is sometimes confused with famous children’s authors such as Beatrix Potter, Frances Hodgson Burnett, or E. Nesbit, but none of them supplied the story behind the Guiding term. The British junior section was initially called Rosebuds before adopting Brownies in 1915.