Overview

A new edition in full colour, reproducing the original illustrations from 1946. At last she reached the brow of the hill...now the country opened out below her and she looked down into a wide and lovely valley...Still patched with snow the little fields spread like a carpet below her and here and there a farmhouse with barns and golden ricks was clearly seen. Across the plain ran, straight as a ruler, a railway line and she saw a toy train puffing and crawling across the picture. Malcolm Saville's classic novel from 1946 is about eleven-year old Jane's discovery of nature and country life during a year spent convalescing on her uncle's farm, after having been dangerously ill in post-war London. This deeply-felt novel was written while Saville was extending his range as a writer, alongside his very successful Lone Pine adventure series, and nature anthologies for children. Inspired by the experiences of Saville's own god-daughter, this marvellous novel is full of the wonder of discovery, as well the happiness of regaining health, making friends, and learning to love the natural world. The novel is also a record of rural England eighty years ago, written by one of the great twentieth century English nature writers. 'A beautifully illustrated story of an eleven year old London girl's year convalescing in Hertfordshire in 1946. Her experiences are delightful. A traditional story but easily relatable for modern young people.' - Myra-Rose Craig

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9781912766543

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Malcolm Saville (1901-1982) was a prolific English children’s writer who wrote his books while working in the publicity departments of London publishers. The progressive children’s author Geoffrey Trease observed that Saville was an author with ‘an intense feeling’ for the English countryside and that this novel contains the ‘essential’ Saville, whose reputation is rooted in the many series of adventure books that he wrote between the years 1943 and 1978 and is most associated with his ‘Lone Pine’ series of novels. Many of Saville’s books were dramatised for the BBC’s Children’s Hour, and he apparently received 3,000 letters a week from young readers. We are told that Saville, a good publicist, answered all his fan mail personally (quite a feat if true) and he certainly sent out regular newsletters to his fans. Hazel Sheeky Bird is a Research Associate at the University of Newcastle in the UK. Her research interests in children's literature range from 1890 into the mid-20th century, including what has come to be known as camping and tramping fiction. She uses a wide range of literary and historical sources on access to and use of the countryside, social mobility and class relations, the politics of leisure, culture and sailing, mapping, geographical exploration, national identity and Englishness.

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