Favourite Children's Authors: Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart: A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)

It seems like an auspicious sign that I should have run across a first edition of Mary Stewart's A Walk in Wolf Wood in a vintage shop on New Year's Eve.

It's not my favourite among her children's books, but it's still a nice piece of timeslip fiction, with werewolves, and enchantments, and enchanted talismans, and all the usual appurtenances of her stories.

The American edition was actually subtitled "A Tale of Fantasy and Magic", in case potential buyers might be in doubt on the matter.

Mary Stewart: Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)

More to the point, I'd only seen it previously as a rather scruffy little paperback, whereas this hardback looks exceptionally handsome alongside my copies of her other two books in the genre, Ludo and the Star Horse and The Little Broomstick.

Mary Stewart: The Little Broomstick (1971)

The latter has recently been filmed - with a largely rewritten plot and somewhat sub-standard animation - as Mary and the Witch's Flower by Studio Ghibli. I'm normally a fan of their work, but in this case they didn't really succeed in catching the richly atmospheric simplicity of the original: a fantasy classic if ever there was one.

In particular, Endor College, Madam Mumblechook's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seems like a definite prototype for J. K. Rowling's Hogwarts. And there are many other seemingly throwaway details in Stewart's story, such as the strangely offkilter nursery rhymes recited within the walls of the college, which have stayed stuck in my head for all these years.

Hiromasa Yonebayashi, dir.: Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

The Little Broomstick is probably Stewart's best and most inventive children's book. And yet, despite that, I wouldn't call it my favourite among the three. Ludo and the Star Horse, her cleverly concocted guide to the signs of the Zodiac and other wonders of the night sky, is the one I never tire of.

Of course, as with most children's books, to get their full flavour you really have to have been there - to have read them when you were still a kid. The Little Broomstick was published when I was nine, and Ludo when I was twelve. I don't know when my parents first bought them, but probably on first publication, given the fact that both are first editions.

I certainly had no objections at that age to reading "girly" kid's books alongside the more boy's-own offerings of W. E. Johns, Arthur Catherall et al. My sister Anne was a fan of Mary Stewart's romance novels, which meant that I ended up reading all of those, too. Despite my initial misgivings, I found I really liked them - particularly the ones set in exotic locales such as Provence or the Greek Islands.

Mary Stewart: Romance Novels (2020)

It's alleged that Charles Darwin had two criteria for the novels he read as a respite from his labours: they had to have a happy ending, and the heroine must be good-looking. Much ink has been spilt on the rich irony of this juxtaposition: the prophet of biological determinism a closet sentimentalist in his off-hours!

There's something to be said for such comfortable generic expectations, though. Mary Stewart, the uncrowned "Queen of Romantic Suspense", understood exactly what her audience wanted: a frisson of fear, some dark shadows at the heart of the narrative, but no devastating surprises at the end. She was always more of an Ann Radcliffe than a Monk Lewis.

Mary Stewart: The House of Letterawe

And so it might have gone on indefinitely. She published a new book virtually every year between 1955 and 1968. Her publishers were happy; the fans were satisfied; she seemed to have found her ideal role both in literature and life, in her grand estate on Loch Awe in the Scottish Highlands.

Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave (1970)

But then something happened: something unprecedented and completely off-topic. She wrote the autobiography of a Dark Ages boy with prophetic gifts, a boy called Merlin. She called it The Crystal Cave, after a strange little poem by Orkney writer Edwin Muir:

O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger
Across the memory and the wave?
Or a runner who'll outrun
Man's long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of memory
And hang the apple on the tree?
Will your magic ever show
The sleeping bride shut in her bower,
The day wreathed in its mound of snow
and Time locked in his tower?

Fans of her romance novels had no idea what to make of all this. She did write a few more in that vein, at widely scattered intervals, but from now on she was firmly in the grip of the Arthurian bug, which I've written more about here and here.

I called it "England's Dreaming" in the second of these posts, where I tried to link this fascination with the possible historicity of a figure called "King Arthur" with the wider subject of literary psychogeography.

However you try to account for it, though, this fascinating mania was at its height in the 1960s and 70s - presumably as part of the contemporary revival of New Age ideologies of nature worship and revived paganism.

Geoffrey Ashe, ed.: The Quest for Arthur's Britain (1971)

Geoffrey Ashe's Quest for Arthur's Britain was one of the Bibles of the new faith - even more than his slew of other books on the subject - principally because it seemed to promise concrete archaeological evidence for the existence of a charismatic warlord who flourished in the late 5th century, at much the same time as the romanticised "King Arthur."

A kind of orthodoxy grew up which took for granted that the resistance of the last Romano-Britains against the incoming Saxons had given rise not only to the idea but also a good deal of the detail of the exploits of this "Arthur" - whatever he looked like, and wherever he was based.

The intensity of Mary Stewart's imagination enabled her to flesh out this Romano-British world, still full of the relics of empire but gradually sliding into the chaotic world of tribal rivalries and local warlords.

Joan Grant: Winged Pharaoh (1937)

Her book was, accordingly, a massive success. It remains not only tremendously readable but also strangely persuasive in its vision of those long-lost times, poised between Classical antiquity and the oncoming heroic age. It was as if she'd had a vision, or an out-of-body experience, along the lines of the "reincarnation novels" of English parapsychologist Joan Grant.

The difference was that Mary Stewart could write.

Mary Stewart: The Hollow Hills (1973)

Am I the only one to have found the sequel a little disappointing? Merlin gradually retreats from centre stage to share the limelight with the boy Arthur who (I'm sorry to say) has little of the same incandescent star power.

There's less (I suppose inevitably) of the magic of a child's intense perceptions of the world, and more of the necessary politics involved in setting up a kingdom in Dark Age Britain.

It's still all very well written, mind you - and it's hard to imagine any normal reader actually stopping reading following Stewart's expertly woven story at the end of book one, but I'm afraid that it's The Crystal Cave which remains the masterpiece. The other books simply serve to flesh out the theme it proposes.

Mary Stewart: The Last Enchantment (1979)

Those of us who read these books when they first came out had a long weary wait before we could get out hands on The Last Enchantment. And it was bound to be a disappointment on some level, given this level of anticipation.

It's good enough. It completes the trilogy - Merlin's story is told to its end, though there are still some aspects of Arthur's left to fill in. Or so Stewart must have thought, anyway, as she went on to write a further instalment, devoted to the equally crucial figure of Mordred.

Mary Stewart: The Wicked Day (1983)

He is, of course, in many ways the most interesting character in the whole story: the Judas to Arthur's Christ. No-one's exactly cracked him yet, but there have been some pretty good attempts along the way.

Is this one of them? Up to each reader to decide, I guess. ...

Mary Stewart: The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

And finally, last and definitely least, there's The Prince and the Pilgrim. Stewart was nearly 80 when she published this last addendum to her Arthurian world, and by then the kettle was no longer really on the boil.

The only reason I knew this book even existed was because I found a copy in a bach where I was staying one summer. Of course I promptly read it from cover to cover.

It's not really part of her main Arthurian sequence - nor is it simply a romance novel set in those historical times - but it has elements of both of those things. There's no real harm in it, but it's doubtful if there's much point in it either.

From anyone else, it would simply seem a straightforward potboiler, but I guess it's just the contrast with the wildly passionate writer of The Crystal Cave which makes it seem an unfortunate coda to her career as a visionary historical novelist.

Mary Stewart Omnibus: Rose Cottage / Stormy Petrel / Thornyhold (1999)

She published a few last novella-length fictions in her original romance vein, with occasional flashes of the old brilliance, but the heart of her work lies earlier: in those first fresh novels, intoxicated by the love of travel and romance in foreign parts; also in the magic of the three children's books.

Above all, it rests on the unforgettable intensity of The Crystal Cave.

Weird Tales: The Werewolf Howls (1941)

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Mary Stewart

Lady Mary Florence Elinor Stewart [née Rainbow]
(1916-2014)

Novels:


1. Madam, Will You Talk? (1955)
   • Madam, Will You Talk? 1955. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1971.
2. Wildfire at Midnight (1956)
   • Wildfire at Midnight. 1956. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1974.
3. Thunder on the Right (1957)
   • Thunder on the Right. 1957. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1972.
4. Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)
   • Nine Coaches Waiting. 1958. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964.
   • The Castle of Danger [Young Adult version] (Longman simplified TESL Series, 1981)
5. My Brother Michael (1959)
   • My Brother Michael. 1959. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
6. The Ivy Tree (1961)
   • The Ivy Tree. 1961. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1975.
7. The Moon-Spinners (1962)
   • The Moonspinners. 1962. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
8. This Rough Magic (1964)
   • This Rough Magic. 1964. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.
9. Airs Above the Ground (1965)
   • Airs Above the Ground. London: Readers Book Club, 1965.
10. The Gabriel Hounds (1967)
    • The Gabriel Hounds. 1967. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1968.
11. The Wind Off the Small Isles (1968)
    • The Wind off the Small Isles. Illustrated by Laurence Irving. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968.
12. Touch Not the Cat (1976)
    • Touch Not the Cat. 1976. Coronet Books. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977.
13. Thornyhold (1988)
14. Stormy Petrel (1991)
    • Stormy Petrel. London: BCA, by arrangement with Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.
15. Rose Cottage (1997)

Series:


16. The Merlin Chronicles (1970-1995)
    1. The Crystal Cave (1970)
       • The Crystal Cave. 1970. Hodder Paperbacks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971.
    2. The Hollow Hills (1973)
       • The Hollow Hills. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973.
    3. The Last Enchantment (1979)
       • The Last Enchantment. 1979. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.
    4. The Wicked Day (1983)
       • The Wicked Day. 1983. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984.
    5. The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)
       • The Prince and the Pilgrim. 1995. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

Children's novels:


17. The Little Broomstick (1971)
    • The Little Broomstick. Illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1971.
18. Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)
    • Ludo and the Star Horse. Illustrated by Gino D’Achille. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1974.
19. A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)
    • A Walk in Wolf Wood. Illustrated by Doreen Caldwell. Hodder and Stoughton Children's Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.

Poetry:


20. Frost on the Window: And other Poems (1990)

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Signs of the Zodiac

1. Aquarius: The Water-Bearer (January 20 – February 18)
   • Deity: GANYMEDE, cupbearer of the gods
2. Pisces: The Fish (February 19 - March 20)
   • Deity: APHRODITE & EROS, goddess of love & god of desire
3. Aries: The Ram (March 21 – April 19)
   • Deity: ARES, god of war
4. Taurus: The Bull (April 20 – May 20)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
5. Gemini: The Twins (May 21 – June 20)
   • Deity: APOLLO & ARTEMIS, the divine siblings
6. Cancer: The Crab (June 21 – July 22)
   • Deity: HERA, queen of the gods
7. Leo: The Lion (July 23 – August 22)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
8. Virgo: The Virgin (August 23 – September 22)
   • Deity: DEMETER, goddess of agriculture
9. Libra: The Scales (September 23 – October 22)
   • Deity: THEMIS, goddess of justice
10. Scorpio: The Scorpion (October 23 – November 21)
    • Deity: ARTEMIS, goddess of the hunt
11. Sagittarius: The Archer (November 22 – December 21)
    • Deity: APOLLO, the archer
12. Capricorn: The Sea-Goat (December 22 – January 19)
    • Deity: PAN, god of the wild

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The World of Shakespeare

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

I'm not sure if four times in a row constitutes a tradition, but this is the fourth time Bronwyn and I have seen the New Year in with a (for us, at least) maniacally difficult jigsaw puzzle.

In 2022 it was The World of Charles Dickens:

In 2023 it was The World of Dracula:

Last year, 2024, it was The World of Hercule Poirot:

This year, 2025, it's Shakespeare in the hot seat:

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

I've already written a number of posts about Shakespeare - one about the sources for his plays; another about the differences between the quarto and folio editions of his works; and, most recently, one about that perennial question whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare - or somebody else of the same name.

The World of Shakespeare
Photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (5/1/25)

To tell you the truth, it's a bit of a relief to get out from under that last question and down to the nitty-gritty details of Shakespeare's London: complete with rebel heads on pikes, Gloriana on a floating barge, and a variety of theatrical troupes performing his plays.

Adam Simpson: The World of Shakespeare (2019)

As you'll have gathered, Shakespeare for me has mostly been a matter of books: biographies, collected editions, contextual "interpretations" ... Watching Kenneth Branagh's absurd adaptation of As You Like It the other day on Neon, though, I was struck by just how much fun Shakespeare can be.

The play is, admittedly, a rather silly one - and Branagh's decision to set it in Meiji-era Japan made literally no sense at all - but it was all still so delightful: exiled maidens running around in drag (for no obvious reason), pinning their love poems on the poor, long-suffering trees; melancholy Jaques spouting long speeches about nothing in particular. What's not to like?

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: As You Like It (2006)

It reminded me of the good old days when we used to sit down dutifully to watch each new instalment in Cedric Messina's (then Jonathan Miller's) long-running BBC Television Shakespeare (1978-85). There were some real revelations there. Who would have thought that his early Henry VI trilogy could be made into so gripping a Brechtian presentation on the roots of power? Who knew that the long-neglected Pericles could be made into such a profoundly beautiful and moving drama?

I ended up writing a poem about it, in fact:

William Shakespeare (with George Wilkins?): Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984)

The Late Romances: Pericles


We have reached the 3rd Act
& Pericles
is ranting on the deck

the young Marina
lies in her mother’s arms
(still cold & dark
before revival)

which is coast
which sea?
the billows surge
up to the heavens

bodies bound below
by mortal surges
&how fares the dead?

[8/6/86]

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What can I say? I was young at the time ...

It's easy enough to get the chance to see the great tragedies, or the Roman plays, or the Richard II / Henry IV / Henry V tetralogy, but the virtue of this BBC version was that they did everything. Timon of Athens, Cymbeline, King John - you name it, it was there. The productions were wildly various in quality, mind you. Some were pretty hard to sit through, others delightful - but they gave you a sense of what each of those 37 plays could be.

As you can guess from the above, it was the late romances - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest - which were the real thrill for me. You see the last two performed sometimes, but hardly ever the first two.

Michael J. B. Allen & Kenneth Muir, ed.: Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto (1981)

I spent a good deal of time poring over the volume above in the Auckland University Library. So much time, in fact, that I eventually had to buy a copy for myself: a doorstopper if ever there was one!

Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto

It's almost unreadable, to be honest - but if you need to track some errant detail of wording, there it is.

Charlton Hinman, ed.: The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare (1968)

The Shakespearean First Folio is a different matter. There are various facsimiles to choose from - it's unlikely that any of us will ever have the money (or the hubris) to purchase one of the few surviving copies of the original edition. You'd have to keep it in a bank vault, in any case!

The First Folio of Shakespeare

It's a very handsome volume - colossal, yes, but clearly laid out and printed, with a host of important creative and critical issues hanging on virtually every line.

In any case, if you're looking for an absorbing way to pass a few idle hours, I'm afraid I can't recommend The World of Shakespeare. It's by far the most difficult of the puzzles we've done to date. There are few tell-tale blocks of colour once you've laid down the blue of the Thames, and a ridiculous number of tricky spires, towers, turrets, gable rooftops and leafy gardens to fill in one by one.

There's certainly some satisfaction in getting it done, but I'm afraid that it's back to the grindstone now for me - as well, I fear, as the rest of you.

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A Happy New Year to All in
2025!

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Christmas Books = Christmas Cheer!

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Collected Poems (3 vols: 2024)

Some years ago now I wrote a blogpost called "The Tolkien Industry." It seemed to cause a bit of a stir at the time, and even ended up being reprinted on the Scoop Review of Books (16/6/09).

What I thought were some fairly mild remonstrances at the relentless commercialisation of J. R. R. Tolkien's literary remains apparently touched a raw nerve in quite a few readers. A certain "Mister Lit" enquired:

... does Ross the academic subscribe to the increasingly meaningless dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture which sees meaningless ‘poetry’ by so-called ‘postmodernists’ studied in great depth while popular, human-oriented authors like Tolkien and Wilbur Smith are regarded as not ‘good enough’?

To which I'd reply (some 16 years later): No, not then and not now. I have to say, though, that I do find the juxtaposition of Tolkien and Wilbur Smith somewhat eccentric. So far as I know, no-one's yet been tempted to publish Wilbur Smith's scribbled notes and papers in vast, annotated, scholarly editions. Perhaps it's just a matter of time, though.

The next comment, by a Henry Saltfleet, was even more indignant:

Jack Ross writes: “What’s a poor collector to do? A poor completist collector, that is.” Well, in his case I think he should get rid of his collection and take up a hobby more suited to his intellect — perhaps bowling. His main argument against newly published Tolkien material seems to be that it takes up shelf space. But what is more egregious is his underlying belief that because (for whatever reason) he isn’t interested in such material that he thinks those of us who are interested in it should be deprived of the chance to read it. Fie on him.

That sideswipe at bowlers and bowling seems rather more egregious than any of my own misdeeds, I must say. What did they ever do to get dragged into this argument? Bowling is (by all accounts) a sport requiring great visual acuity and muscular skill, which puts it a fair few rungs above balancing books on shelves, I would have thought. If only I had chosen to cultivate it in my misspent youth, how much better off I would be now!

As for the rest, I think Mr. Saltfleet rather missed my point. It wasn't that this material isn't interesting - more that this piecemeal, over-annotated and commentated mode of publication doesn't really do it justice. However, my lament (in 2009) that we still lacked a decent Collected Poems for Tolkien, has finally, a decade and a half later, been met by a massive 3-volume boxed-set edition edited by Tolkienophiles extraordinaire Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond.

WHICH I JUST GOT FOR CHRISTMAS! (all those heavy-handed hints to Santa must have paid off ...)

Christina Scull & Wayne G Hammond, ed.: The Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien (3 vols: 2024)

"Thrills for Noddy!" - as some of the coarser denizens of my old school used to say when encountering excessive displays of enthusiam. Never mind. Damn them if they can't take a joke. It is quite a thrill - for me, at least.

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But wait, there's more. As a suitable companion volume, I'd already decided to invest in another absurdly over-elaborate piece of book design, a new edition of Tolkien's The Silmarillion illustrated by its own author!

Christopher Tolkien, ed.: The Silmarillion. Illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien (2022)

I look forward to rereading it over Summer, savouring Tolkien's clumsy daubs and line-drawings, and perhaps even comparing them from time to time to Ted Nasmith's perhaps slightly over-skilful illustrations for his own 2004 version of The Silmarillion.

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion. Illustrated by Ted Nasmith (2004)

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Curiously enough, I had much the same experience recently comparing two different illustrated texts of Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings. Illustrated by the author (2021)

On the one hand, there's this sumptuous new hardback edition, with illustrations culled from the author's papers, which I purchased when it first came out in 2021. I mean, what reasonable person could resist the temptation of owning "the complete text printed in two colors, plus sprayed edges and a ribbon bookmark"?

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1991)

But then, on the other hand, there's this thirty-year old veteran I picked up second-hand a couple of months ago, with illustrations that now look rather prophetic of much of the visual imagery of the feature films.

Not, perhaps, that that's all that surprising when you consider that Alan Lee (together with Canadian illustrator John Howe) was one of the two main concept designers on The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) - as well as working on its prequel, The Hobbit (2012-14).

There's never a shortage of arguments for getting new books, unfortunately - it's persuading yourself that you can jettison some, or (better still) not buy them in the first place, which is hard.

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J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit. Illustrated by the author (2023)

I'm not falling for this one, though. I can promise you that! I mean, who needs it? I already own a nice old hardback copy of the original edition, which was already "illustrated by the author":

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937 / 1974)

And, if that's not enough, I also have copies of the two books below which (between them) surely provide more Hobbit-iana than even the most exigent fan could require:

Douglas A. Andersen, ed.: The Annotated Hobbit (1988 / 2002)

John Rateliff: The History of the Hobbit (2007 / 2011)

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What else? Well, there's an intriguing new addition to the Heaney canon, to stand alongside Marco Sonzogni's excellent 2022 edition of The Translations of Seamus Heaney:

Christopher Reid, ed.: The Letters of Seamus Heaney (2024)

There's also the latest Murakami novel, of which I have high hopes after a couple of duds from the Japanese literary superstar:

Haruki Murakami: The City and Its Uncertain Walls. Trans. Philip Gabriel (2023 / 2024)

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J. R. R. Tolkien (1895-1973)

To return to Tolkien, though ("Tollers" to his friends - just as C. S. Lewis was "Jack" and his brother Major W. H. Lewis "Warnie").

If by any chance you're still having difficulties disentangling the relationships between his various works: the two main ones published during his lifetime - The Hobbit (1937) & The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) - and that other, posthumous compilation - The Silmarillion (1977); together with its myriad supplementary texts - you could certainly do worse than have a quick squiz at the diagram below:

Ian Alexander: Tolkien's Legendarium (2021)

Clear as crystal, wouldn't you say? In any case, this is just to wish you all a similarly

MERRY CHRISTMAS
& A Happy New Year

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