Book description
Covering the period from the publication of Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland to Winnie-the-Pooh, Humphrey Carpenter examines the lives
and writings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, George Macdonald,
Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A. A. Milne and others
whose works make up the Golden Age of children's literature. Both a
collective biography and a work of criticism, Secret Gardens forces us
to reconsider childhood classics in a new light. 'Secret Gardens
permits us to see in a fresh light the interaction between cultural
history and literature, and to realize that ... it wasn't mere misfits
who withdrew into the writing of children's books, but rather the sort
of misfits who reflected the prevailing dissatisfactions of the age.'
New York Times Book Review
Humphrey Carpenter was born and educated in Oxford, and attended the
Dragon School and Keble College. He was a well-known biographer and
children's writer, and worked previously as a producer at the BBC. He
wrote biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten,
Ezra Pound, C. S. Lewis and Dennis Potter. Among his many books for
children were the best-selling Mr Majeika series. He also wrote several
plays for the theatre and radio. A keen musician, he was a member of a
1930s-style jazz band, Vile Bodies, which was resident at the Ritz Hotel
in London for a number of years. He died in 2005.
