Back to The Children of Shallowford main page
Some family photographs from the Shallowford era
Henry Williamson and Reginald Pound
I have not found any envelope containing reviews of the first edition of The Children of Shallowford. One has to presume that in the confusion of the beginning of the Second World War and HW’s own intensive work on the farm that autumn they were lost. His diary records that for three weeks from the second week of September he was blasting chalk from the quarry (total 120 tons), which was then spread onto the farm fields, together with a large amount of human manure from London. This was all very hard work. Perhaps he even threw them away in anguish, for at that time Gipsy and the two younger children (John and Margaret were away at school, Windles was now helping on the farm) went off to live with her brother Robin, then living in Bedford. The spirit of the book was broken: killed, at the very time his readers were enjoying in print its seemingly idyllic pastoral happy family scene.
(If anyone knows of any reviews we would be very grateful for copies to post here. For instance Brian Vesey Fitzgerald states in 1959 that he reviewed the first edition – and the Eastern Daily Press review notes that the first edition was rather overlooked due to the outbreak of war.)
There is one review which HW had pasted into the front of his file copy:
And one other loose one:
Sunday Independent (Dublin):
1959 revised edition reviews:
The Times Literary Supplement:
Evening News:
Time and Tide:
The Field:
Manchester Guardian (Isabel Quigly), 31 July 1959, and reprinted on 6 August 1959:
The Spectator (Arthur Boyars), 7 August 1959: mainly reviewing T. H. White’s The Godstone and the Blackymor (Cape, 18s) which seems to be a ‘fantastic’ tale (in the original sense): HW gets mention as rooted in the real world (‘the different and good lives have also led to different and good books’):
Birmingham Post (Brian Vesey Fitzgerald), 1 August 1959:
Eastern Daily Press (M.P.), 28 August 1959:
Western Morning News, 11 September 1959:
Fleetwood Chronicle, 24 September 1959:
*************************
The first edition, 1939, with one of Faber's dustwrappers typical of the period:
1959, Faber, revised edition:
1978, Macdonald and Jane's, with new illustrations and an Afterword by Richard Williamson (note the toy wooden Alvis shooting brake on the table – perhaps the original inspiration for Richard's passion for the car and all things Alvis!):
Back to The Children of Shallowford main page
Some family photographs from the Shallowford era
Henry Williamson and Reginald Pound
*************************