Description

‘An enchanting book. These pages simply quiver with the beauty, happiness and vigour of forests, seas and mountains . . . I can safely promise joy to any reader of it. Perfection’ Eleanor Farjeon, Winner of the Carnegie Medal and The Hans Christian Andersen Award

Discover this extraordinary lost classic of nature writing – a fable about wildness and the desire to escape – beautifully illustrated by beloved artist and The Lost Words creator Jackie Morris

‘Miraculous – a fearless odyssey into a dreamtime of wildness and enchantment. Gloriously illuminated by Jackie Morris’s moving art, this is a work of strange power for our own bewildered times’ Nick Drake

Little Eepersip doesn’t want to live in a house with doors and windows and a roof, so she runs away to live in the wild – first in the Meadow, then by the Sea, and finally in the Mountain. Her heartbroken parents follow her at first, bringing her back home to ‘safety’ and locking her up in the stifling square of the house. But she slips away once more, following her wild heart out of the door and far away…

Barbara Newhall Follett was just thirteen years old when she published The House Without Windows in 1927. The book went on to become a million-copy bestseller. Years later, as an adult herself, Barbara followed in the footsteps of her radical heroine – dissatisfied with the limitations of life as a respectable married woman, she walked out of her house one day and simply disappeared.

Penguin are delighted to republish Barbara Newhall Follett’s extraordinary feminist fable for the next generation of nature lovers and escapees to discover and cherish. Newly introduced by Jackie Morris, and filled with her beautifully inked artwork, The House Without Windows is an irresistible paean to the natural world and its transcendent effect on the human heart.

‘A classic, as miraculous and awe-inspiring as the nine-year-old author. Jackie Morris portrays the artistic elegance of the eastern ink with the wisdom of the West’ Xinran, author of The Good Women of China

Praise for The Lost Words

‘Breathtaking . . . Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at’ New Statesman

‘Luminous’ Sunday Times

‘Sumptuous . . . A book combining meticulous wordcraft with exquisite illustrations deftly restores language describing the natural world to the children’s lexicon…The Lost Words is a beautiful book and an important one’ Observer

Publisher Review

The House without Windows is miraculous – a fearless odyssey into a dreamtime of wildness and enchantment. Gloriously illuminated by Jackie Morris’s moving art, this is a work of strange power for our own bewildered times. — Nick Drake . . . Extraordinary. Deeply weird, beautiful & unsettling. — Robert Macfarlane One of the strangest, most enchanting and mystifying stories I’ve read in recent years . . . It’s beautiful, bonkers and brimming with the abundance and richness of nature and a life lived with no boundaries. Also Jackie’s intro and illustrations provide a depth and context that only lifts the book and its story higher. — Rob Cowen