Book description
A compelling history of extraordinary children - brought up by
animals, growing up alone in the wilderness, or locked for long years
in solitary confinement. Wild or feral children have fascinated us
down the centuries, and continue to do so today. Michael Newton deftly
investigates such infamous cases as Peter the Wild Boy, who gripped
the attention of Swift and Defoe; Memmie Le Blanc, the savage Girl of
Champagne, a primitive outsider adrift on the streets of
Enlightenment; Kaspar Hauser, a romantic orphan confined in a dungeon
from infancy for sixteen years; Kamala and Amala, two girls brought up
by wolves in the imperial India of the 1920s; and more recently,
Genie, the girl locked up in a single room in Los Angeles throughout
her whole childhood. He looks too at a boy bought up among monkeys in
Uganda; and in Moscow, the boy found living with a pack of wild dogs.
Savage Girls and Wild Boys looks at the lives of these children and of
the adults who 'rescued' them, looked after them, educated or abused
them. How can we explain the mixture of disgust and envy such children
can provoke? And what can they teach us about our notions of education
and civilisation?
Michael Newton grew up in Brighton, wanting from the age of six to be
a writer. On graduating, he started a PhD on ghost stories at University
College, London, but really spent his time writing 'bad' plays and
novels. When his grant ran out, he went to Harvard for a year as a
Visiting Research Fellow. He discovered the subject of his first book,
Savage Girls and Wild Boys, by accident and he felt that the stories and
the children themselves resonated in him. He has worked in various jobs,
including tour guide, clerk, theatre reviewer, and above all, freelance
lecturer - at one point, teaching in five institutions at once. He has
taught at University College, London, Central St Martin's College of
Art, Princeton University and Leiden University. He has also written for
the Times Literary Supplement.
