Description

‘A MARVEL’ PHILIP PULLMAN

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.

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‘A delight.’ Julia Donaldson

‘Profoundly erudite and gloriously entertaining, this is the most purely enjoyable literary history I have ever read.’ Tom Holland

‘The Haunted Wood captures the magic of childhood reading and casts a spell of its own.’ Laura Freeman, The Times

Publisher Review

‘One of the best surveys of children’s literature I’ve read. It takes a particular sort of sensibility to look at children’s literature with all the informed knowledge of a lifetime’s reading of ‘proper’ books, and neither patronise (terribly good for a children’s book) nor solemnly over-praise. Sam Leith hits the right spot again and again. The Haunted Wood is a marvel, and I hope it becomes a standard text for anyone interested in literature of any sort.’ -Philip Pullman ‘Profoundly erudite and gloriously entertaining, this is the most purely enjoyable literary history I have ever read.’ -Tom Holland

‘A wonderful book that rediscovers the magic of childhood reading and explores the complexity of some of our best loved authors.’ -Nina Stibbe ‘Sam Leith has been encyclopedic and forensic in this journey through children’s books. It’s a joy for anyone who cares or wonders why we have children’s literature.’ -Michael Rosen ‘Seriously delightful, and delightfully serious… all of us who love to read started here, and Sam Leith does a wonderful job of reminding us how and why it happened.’ -Lee Child ‘Scholarly but wholly accessible and written with such love, The Haunted Wood is an utter joy.’ -Lucy Mangan ‘A gorgeous, loving and, most of all, learned guide to the stories that make us who we are.’ -Hadley Freeman ‘How children imagine the world and how the world imagines children are questions of perennial interest. The process by which “children’s literature” came to be a distinct phenomenon is central to understanding the issues; and here is an exuberant, very wide-ranging, irrepressibly funny, consistently insightful survey of that story, as much a delight to read as the best of its subject matter.’ -Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury ‘A history as beguiling, peculiar and immersive as the field it describes – and the alluring, creepy woods into which it leads us, never to return…’ -Lemony Snicket ‘From Wordsworth to Wonderland, and the Hundred Acre Wood to Hogwarts, Sam Leith’s history of children’s literature is as surprising and playful as the stories themselves. Written in punchy, energetic prose, this isn’t only a set of love letters to the authors who have shaped generations of readers. It’s a reminder that their books continue to be little time machines that can transport even the most jaded of adults back to the imaginative world of childhood.’ -Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of The Story of Alice