page_title: Jack Frost
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Jack Frost / In popular culture / Literature
caption_attribution_description: WIndow covered in water crystals 8 Jan 2010, Liverpool
context_page_description: Jack Frost is a personification of frost, ice, snow, sleet, winter, and freezing cold. He is a variant of Old Man Winter who is held responsible for frosty weather, nipping the fingers and toes in such weather, coloring the foliage in autumn, and leaving fern-like patterns on cold windows in winter.
  Starting in late 19th century literature, more developed characterizations of Jack Frost depict him as a sprite-like character, sometimes appearing as a sinister mischief-maker or as a hero.
context_section_description: Hannah Flagg Gould's (1789-1865) poem "The Frost" features a mischievous being responsible for the quieter phenomena of winter, beautiful ice paintings on windows but who also got upset at lack of gifts and caused the cold to break and ruin things.
  In Margaret T. Canby's "Birdie and His Fairy Friends" (1874), there is a short story titled "The Frost Fairies." In this story, Jack Frost is the king of the Winter Spirits and is described as a kind fellow who wants to help children, whereas a king of a neighboring kingdom, King Winter, is cruel to them. The story tells the origins of how Jack Frost began to oversee the coloring of the leaves of the forest in fall.
  In 1891 Helen Keller made her own reproduction of the story, titled The Frost King.
  In Charles Sangster's "Little Jack Frost", published in The Aldine, (Vol.7, No.16, 1875) Jack Frost is a playful being who runs around playing pranks and 'nose-biting', coating places with snow before being chased off by Dame Nature for spring.
  In L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), Jack Frost is the son of the otherwise unnamed Frost King. He takes pleasure in nipping "scores of noses and ears and toes", but Santa Claus, who likes Jack (who he sees as a "jolly rogue") though he mistrusts him, asks him to spare the children. Jack says he will, if he can resist the temptation. The same Jack appears in "The Runaway Shadows", a short story by Baum. In this story, he has the power to freeze shadows, separating them from their owners, making them their own living entities.
  In Laurell K. Hamilton's Meredith Gentry series, a character emerges as the original Jack Frost.
  Jack Frost has appeared as a minor character in the Rupert Bear stories.
  In the Rainbow Magic books by Daisy Meadows, Jack Frost is an antagonist who causes trouble in  Fairyland. He is accompanied by pesky goblins who steal the fairies' important objects, and try to sabotage them.
  Jack Frost also appears in "First Death in Nova Scotia", a poem by Elizabeth Bishop.
  In the novel Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, Jack grows tired of "fern patterns" and paints more elaborate pictures on windows.
  Jack Frost appears in The Veil trilogy of novels by Christopher Golden.
  The Man Jack, an enigmatic assassin, calls himself Jack Frost in The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.
  The Stranger, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, stars Jack Frost as a lonely stranger with amnesia.
caption: Window with frost patterns
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