Archive for October 7, 2009
THE CHILDREN’S BOOK by A. S. Byatt
The excerpt above is part of a woman journalist’s article after she came to interview storyteller Olive Wellwood, who, with her banker/financial writer husband, Humphrey, presided over a seemingly magical household built on legendary riders of the “Paracelsian four elementals: sylphs in the air, gnomes in the earth, undines in water, salamanders in fire.” The building blocks came in the form of old, blended and new fairy tales; ornately ghoulish museum pieces such as the ancient and kobold-studded Gloucester Candlestick; and a secret pastoral tree house where the children could run wild. The Wellwoods and their friends were well-off, fashionable Fabian Society (and other related organization) members who, in the late 1800’s and beyond, believed in raising their children with a minimum of discipline in a rustic but artistically rich environment.
October 7, 2009
Tags: 1800s, Historical, Literary Posted in: 2009 Man Booker Nominee, Award Winning Author, Book Club Choice, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom 
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