- 592 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
*A Sunday Times, Irish Times, Financial Times, Independent, Daily Mail, TLS, Economist, Prospect, Evening Standard and New Statesman Book of the Year 2024*
Can you remember the first time you fell in love with a book?
The stories we read as children matter. The best ones are indelible in our memories; reaching far beyond our childhoods, they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past – collective and individual, remembered and imagined – and invite us to dream up different futures.
In a pioneering history of the children’s literary canon, The Haunted Wood reveals the magic of childhood reading, from the ancient tales of Aesop, through the Victorian and Edwardian golden age to new classics. Excavating the complex lives of our most beloved writers, Sam Leith offers a humane portrait of a genre and celebrates the power of books to inspire and console entire generations.
***
'A MARVEL' PHILIP PULLMAN
'A DELIGHT' JULIA DONALDSON
'GLORIOUSLY ENTERTAINING' TOM HOLLAND
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access The Haunted Wood by Sam Leith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- A Note on the Text
- Prologue • Just So
- I • Once Upon a Time
- Excavating the Past • Anonymous
- Fables and Morals • Aesop · Apuleius
- The Shapes of Stories • Vladimir Propp · Joseph Campbell
- Pre-Modern Childhood • Philippe Ariès · Lawrence Stone
- The Child Is Father of the Man • John Locke · Jean-Jacques Rousseau · William Blake · William Wordsworth
- II • ‘Come, Boy, Learn to Be Wise’
- Respectable Ladies • Sarah Fielding · Anna Laetitia Barbauld · Sarah Trimmer
- Rectitude and Romanticism • Martha Mary Sherwood · Charles and Mary Lamb
- Glass Slippers • Giambattista Basile · the Brothers Grimm · Charles Perrault · Hans Christian Andersen
- III • Down the Rabbit-Hole
- Curiouser and Curiouser • Lewis Carroll · Charles Kingsley
- Incuriouser and Incuriouser • Thomas Hughes · boy’s own · W.H.G. Kingston · G.A. Henty
- IV • Man-Cubs and Naughty Bunnies
- The Law of the Jungle • Rudyard Kipling
- Adventures on the High Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson · John Meade Falkner
- The Seeds of Fantasy • George MacDonald · Carlo Collodi
- Animal Magic • Beatrix Potter · Anna Sewell
- V • Never Such Innocence Again
- From Paragons to Pains • Frances Hodgson Burnett
- ‘Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!’ • E. Nesbit
- ‘His Greatest Pretend’ • J.M. Barrie
- ‘Poop! Poop!’ • Kenneth Grahame
- VI • An Enchanted Place
- Give Me Sunshine • Hugh Lofting · A.A. Milne
- Opening a Franchise • W.E. Johns · Carolyn Keene · Franklin W. Dixon · Richmal Crompton · Arthur Ransome
- Ladies First • P.L. Travers · Noel Streatfeild
- In the Ruin of the Year • J.R.R. Tolkien · T.H. White
- VII • Lashings and Lashings
- An Englishman’s Home • Enid Blyton · Alison Uttley · Philippa Pearce · Lucy M. Boston
- Always Winter and Never Christmas • C.S. Lewis
- Our Friends in the North • Tove Jansson · Astrid Lindgren
- VIII • A Crack in the Teacup
- The Idiot Box
- Genius Loci • Alan Garner · Susan Cooper · Diana Wynne Jones
- Pushing the Boundaries • Ursula K. Le Guin · Madeleine L’Engle
- Wars of the Worlds • Nicholas Fisk · Robert Westall
- IX • Harsh Realities
- Bad Teens • S.E. Hinton · Robert Cormier
- Ralph Comes Out to Play • Judy Blume
- Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit • Richard Adams
- Little Horrors • Roald Dahl
- X • Representing
- Cross-Currents • Malorie Blackman
- This Is Not a Fairytale • Jacqueline Wilson
- XI • Back to the Future
- A Sorting-Hat World • J.K. Rowling
- Darkness Visible • Philip Pullman
- XII • A Thousand Words
- Epilogue • This Lovely World, These Precious Days
- Further Reading
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright Page