The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading
Do you remember the first time you fell in love with a book?
The stories we read as children extend far beyond our childhoods; they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past - collective and individual, remembered and imagined - and invite us to dream up different futures.
In a pioneering history of children's literature, from the ancient world to the present day, Sam Leith reveals the magic of our most cherished stories, and the ways in which they have shaped and consoled entire generations. Excavating the complex lives of beloved writers, Leith offers a humane portrait of a genre - one acutely sensitive to its authors' distinct contexts.Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Sam Leith is Literary Editor of the Spectator. He has also written extensively for the Guardian, TLS, Financial Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail, and was a judge for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. His previous books include You Talkin' To Me?: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Trump and Beyond, and Write To The Point: How to be Clear, Correct, and Persuasive on the Page.
"One of the best surveys of children's literature I've read. It takes a particular sort of sensibility to look at children's literature with all the informed knowledge of a lifetime's reading of 'proper' books, and neither patronise (terribly good for a children's book) nor solemnly over-praise. Sam Leith hits the right spot again and again. The Haunted Wood is a marvel, and I hope it becomes a standard text for anyone interested in literature of any sort." --Philip Pullman
"Profoundly erudite and gloriously entertaining, this is the most purely enjoyable literary history I have ever read." --Tom Holland
"Seriously delightful, and delightfully serious... all of us who love to read started here, and Sam Leith does a great job of reminding us how and why it happened." --Lee Child
"A wonderful book that rediscovers the magic of childhood reading and explores the complexity of some of our best loved authors." --Nina Stibbe
"How children imagine the world and how the world imagines children are questions of perennial interest. The process by which "children's literature" came to be a distinct phenomenon is central to understanding the issues; and here is an exuberant, very wide-ranging, irrepressibly funny, consistently insightful survey of that story, as much a delight to read as the best of its subject matter." --Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
"A gorgeous, loving and, most of all, learned guide to the stories that make us who we are." --Hadley Freeman
"A history as beguiling, peculiar and immersive as the field it describes - and the alluring, creepy woods into which it leads us, never to return..." --Lemony Snicket
"From Wordsworth to Wonderland, and the Hundred Acre Wood to Hogwarts, Sam Leith's history of children's literature is as surprising and playful as the stories themselves. Written in punchy, energetic prose, this isn't only a set of love letters to the authors who have shaped generations of readers. It's a reminder that their books continue to be little time machines that can transport even the most jaded of adults back to the imaginative world of childhood." --Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of The Story of Alice
