Puck of Pook's Hill - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (Paperback)

from thesmellofbooks

I adored this book till the last chapter.

from quondame

Full of fancies an quirks, this exploration of 1500 years of Sussex history guided by Puck, the oldest spirit in England, is probably at the foundation of my fascination for history. Clearly written for children it is not childish in it's presentation of past milieu, though certainly of its time....

from jen.e.moore

Terribly Victorian, of course, but only offensively so at the very end. For the most part it's actually a fairly delightful history of England, Normans and Romans and all that, with lots of adventures and sprinkled with mildly educational material. And I didn't realize that a couple of my favorit...

from atreic

History as told before the world wars happened, as stories to children told by Puck himself. The great sense of place comes from Kipling's own house. There is conquest and questing and empires and fairies, and a sense of much we have lost.

from MelmoththeLost

This was one of those books which started in a somewhat disappointing fashion but which largely got better either as Kipling got into his stride or as my ear got into his sometimes quite dreadfully archaic language. Or maybe I gave up thinking how naff it was and chucked in a few mental hey nonny...