Overview

Penelope Shuttle's History of the Child is a highly evocative exploration of childhood, memory, and imagination, blending personal and historical perspectives. The book's themes include parenting, grief, nature, emotional recovery and connections to the past, guided by the idea of childhood as a transformative and rebellious space. The first of the book's four sections features poems about Katherine of Aragon, the Vestal Virgins, Stanley Spencer and Wallace Stevens, with a focus on grief, nature, and animals. The second, Book of Lullabies, steps closer to the theme of the child, with poems about memory, inwardness, climate change, sexuality in older age, and the natural world. The third part, History of the Child, is a journey back to Penelope Shuttle's own childhood, blending personal memories with imagined perspectives to explore psychological crises, emotional recovery, and the traumas of childhood. It introduces an 'alternative girl child self', inspired by Persian legends, by her late husband Peter Redgrove's dream of such a girl ('my death, and she is my soul'), and by a friend's fanciful wish. The culminating fourth section is a playful sequence about a little table, inspired by her mother and her childhood. The table symbolises connection to her mother, who lived to be 100 years old, and their shared history. History of the Child is guided by themes of memory, imagination, foreboding, magic, history and humour, and seeks to articulate the essence of 'being' through fiery language and elemental imagery. She draws inspiration from Donald Winnicott's concept of the 'potentive space' where play, fantasy and reality intersect.

Full Product Details

Author:   Penelope Shuttle
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Edition:   Paperback original
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.10cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377858

ISBN 10:   1780377851
Pages:   128
Publication Date:   26 February 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

Father Lear 12 Father Lear 13 Orchard End, or The Laboratory of Continuous Effort 14 Beautifully done 15 Rome 16 Wallace 17 Big ships 18 Hearts by night 19 Kew Gardens, 1913 20 Hallam Street 21 Transparent 22 Self-portrait as Katharine of Aragon 23 Dog 25 The Lucidity (or Otherwise) of a Swan 26 Gardens where there’s no need for a garden 27 Uncommon Prayer 28 Wild Rose 29 Washing the Lips 30 Some had their mouths stopped with gold 33 Osterley Park Summertide Trees 34 1976 35 the colour rain in the lavender 36 Rue in Wine 37 The Half-guest 38 Verbs 39 Yoshinaga 40 Observed Phenomena and Fancied Correspondences 41 the opposite of night 42 thou twingest me therewith Beloved as doth a pair of tongs  43 it came as if called 44 long-lost Book of Lullabies 46 cockcrow 47 cradled in the roots of a great tree 48 homestead 49 the candle 50 three green gowns of silence 51 I feel sorry for the anchors, sorry for the piers, 52 Contemplative Promenade Experience 54 infancy of the weather 60 early 21st-century ice loss 61 the false child 62 written on a linden leaf 63 cunnikin 64 summoning the ferry from the shade of the willow 65 book of lullabies 70 all souls’ night History of the Child 73 newefangel 74 own judge and jury 75 notes on her background 76 nine years old 77 child London of London 78 binding with briars, my joys and desires 79 in a strange land 80 Matty 81 her first-nation name is birthstone 82 who made thee? 83 child’s childhood 84 child tilts the planet sideways 85 school play 1957 87 simple question 88 she wants to be famous, so 89 sold her bed and lay on the straw 90 Old Pretender Doll 91 plane to Fargo 1959 92 Lucifer 93 wearing a tunic cut down from… 95 sleeping rough in class 96 frequent subject of Japanese art 97 valentine’s day 98 oh but 99 white road by the bombsite 100 FAQ 101 child as linden shield 102 she’s not the guest of honour 103 glad rag 104 memo to the child 105 La Pucelle 106 when she was the Queen of Maidens 107 st elmo’s chapel 108 down lullaby lane 109 what is trauma? 110 what is happiness? 111 willing sacrifice little table 115 little table   123 Notes

Reviews

A singular, arresting and moving book... two collections in one, hinged by a theme of loss. Lyonesse is Cornwall’s mythical kingdom – its Paradise Lost... It is this kingdom that has fired – watered – Shuttle’s imagination and produced an extraordinary flow of work... Shuttle’s Lyonesse is fresh, clear and convincing. It gives grief geography, an address. I believe in its direct dispatches from a submerged front line. -- Kate Kellaway * on Lyonesse, The Observer, Poetry Book of the Month * The first section of the book, in a breathtaking showcase of skill and imagination, animates the mythical land of Lyonesse, which in legend once sat at the southwestern tip of Cornwall. Symbolism, the surreal, spiritual motifs, and more, shift and swirl together, as fluid and full of changeability as the 'shape-shift silvers' of wave and sea that we delve beneath to encounter this once-was place. In the second part of the book… Shuttle paints a picture of life without a beloved, bringing details to the fore in order to tell – and touch – the reader. Fluid, thoughtful, and full of imagination, this is quite simply a must-read. -- Mab Jones * Buzz Magazine, on Lyonesse * Penelope Shuttle’s wonderful 13th collection is two books in one. The first half of Lyonesse maps a mythical, submerged stretch of land between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, where lions and ballgowns jostle for attention with sunken gods and pre-Raphaelite artist and muse Lizzie Siddal. Shuttle uses this terrain to explore loss, both personal and environmental. The second half, New Lamps for Old, focuses more directly on life after bereavement and its shifting sensations… Throughout Shuttle’s language has a vivid, smile-raising immediacy: 'venture towards the happiness wherever daylight invites us'. -- Rishi Dastidar * The Guardian *

Author Information

Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970, and is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove, co-author with her of the classic study The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman (1978; latest US edition, 2005). Her first collection of poems, The Orchard Upstairs (1981) was followed by six other books from Oxford University Press, and then A Leaf Out of His Book (1999) from Oxford Poets/Carcanet, and Redgrove's Wife (2006) and Sandgrain and Hourglass (2010) from Bloodaxe Books. Her ninth poetry collectioRedgrove's Wife(2006) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Sandgrain and Hourglass(2010) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her retrospective, Unsent: New & Selected Poems 1980-2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), drew on ten collections published over three decades plus the title-collection, Unsent. Her later collections from Bloodaxe are Will you walk a little faster? (2017), Lyonesse (2021), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2022, and History of the Child (2026).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions