The Small Years

The Small Years is, simply, one man's account of what it meant to him to be a child.

Frank Kendon (Author), Walter de la Mare (Introduction by)

9780521155472, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 January 2012

234 pages
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.4 cm, 0.26 kg

The Small Years was first published in June 1930 and printed three times in its first six months. In 1937 it was re-issued in a smaller pocket edition, and this went out of print during the war. This second edition, which was originally published in 1950, returned the text to its larger form. This is simply one man's account of what it meant to him to be a child - to be born and brought up at an unusual school in a remote and beautiful rurality; an account which, by all the evidence, clearly has power over its readers of inciting them to recover and live over again their own private memories of a great variety of childhoods. Mr Walter de la Mare's introduction to the first edition is retained, and the author's original map of the village is in its place once more.

Introduction
1. The hill
2. The wood
3. My mother's mother
4. The night nursery
5. The front hall cupboard
6. The day nursery
7. Grandfather's early days
8. Grandfather at Gowdhurst
9. Tea at the farm
10. The 'x'
11. Tunbridge Wells adventures
12. Birds and flowers
13. Near neighbours
14. Christmas Day
15. Early morning.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]