The Midnight Folk

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Abandoned Area: The brewery and stables at Seekings, obsolete in the age of mass-produced beer and motor cars, now slowly falling into ruin. Sylvia Daisy Pouncer dishonourably leaves her role as Kay's governess at the end of The Midnight Folk, only to return as Abner Brown's wife in The Box of Delights. At seventeen Masefield was living as a vagrant in America. He found work as a bar hand but eventually secured employment at a carpet factory. Thinking that journalism might allow him to write for a living, Masefield returned to England in 1897. When I Was Your Age...: Kay's governess and Mrs Tattle have a session of complaining about what young people these days are coming to, and how none of them are "what we were when we were girls". "Which," the narrator drily notes, in the case of Kay "was very likely true."

The Midnight Folk - John Masefield - Google Books The Midnight Folk - John Masefield - Google Books

Species Surname: Kay's toys include a dog named Dogg and another named P. Dogg (they're said to be cousins), as well as a bear named G. L. Brown Bear. Many of the wild animals he meets also seem to be named after their species, as Bat, Otter, Water Rat, etc. Young Kay Harker has a variety of adventures in search of the truth about a famous treasure that his great-grandfather, a merchant captain, was given for safe-keeping then lost when his crew mutinied. He is aided in his quest by the Midnight Folk, an association of Talking Animals, Living Toys, and other fantastic creatures. Masefield the children’s writers is unbeatable… The Midnight Folk is a truly remarkable book.”– Daily Telegraph (London)The cellar rat is Kay's ally in The Midnight Folk, supplying information in return for raisins, bacon rind and (most appreciated by Rat) a "Naggy" (haggis). In The Box of Delights, the rat has come to hate Kay (because he expects Kay to get a dog), so Abner Brown is able to buy information from him with rum and mouldy cheese. Roper Bilges the gamekeeper shares the name of his grandfather, one of the mutineers on Captain Harker's ship. He has written a book which will be a source of delight to children of future generations well as his own, one that ranks with such masterpieces in this genre The Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland and Sylvie and Bruno. — The Northern Whig, 1927 [1] Or Was It a Dream?: Played with all through the book. All the supernatural events end with Kay waking up, but the "mundane" adventure story (where he's definitely awake) only makes sense if the things he learns on these expeditions are true.

The Midnight Folk - Media Centre - BBC The Midnight Folk - Media Centre - BBC

On October 20, a new film adaptation of John Williams’s novel Butcher’s Crossing, published by NYRB Classics in 2007, will be released in select movie theaters across the U.S. Directed by Gabe Polsky, the film stars Nicolas Cage as the frontiersman Miller and Fred Hechinger... A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading. Join NYRB Classics Book Club Oracular Head: The coven uses a Brazen Head that can see into the past in an attempt to locate the treasure. But not all the creatures that haunt the night are friendly: a coven of witches is also after the treasure, led by the scheming Abner Brown and the sinister Mrs Pouncer, and woe betide anyone who gets in their way. Direct Line to the Author: The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue includes a couple of lapses into first-person, indicating that the author lives in the neighbourhood where the novel is set and has met (or, in the case of the fox, had his poultry raided by) some of the characters.

Deserted Island: What with all the mutinies and maroonings, the history of the treasure includes several, each more bleak and inhospitable than the one before. John Masefield (1878-1967) was born in Herefordshire, England. After being orphaned at an early age, he was sent to sea aboard the school-ship HMS Conway in preparation for a naval career. Masefield’s apprenticeship was disastrous—he was classified as a Distressed British Seaman after a voyage around Cape Horn—and he soon left the ship. Arrangements were then made for him to join another ship in New York. But Masefield had other plans: he deserted ship vowing “to be a writer, come what might.” Determined to recover the long-lost family treasure, Kay finds himself in a race against the evil Abner Brown. Abner has his witch friends and his dark magic to help him, but Kay has the very special Midnight Folk.

The Midnight Folk | Audio Drama Wiki | Fandom The Midnight Folk | Audio Drama Wiki | Fandom

Kay's toys (known as "the guards") have been taken away from him at the start of the book, apparently because they will remind him of his parents; there is a strong implication that Kay's parents are deceased. The guards play little part in the main narrative but have a critical role in the final recovery of the treasure. The Midnight Folk is written as one piece. There are no chapter divisions. Division within the text is obtained by moving from prose to verse or even song in some places. Cunning Like a Fox: One of Kay's allies is Rollicum Bitem Lightfoot, a fox who relies on his wits to keep one step ahead of the local gamekeeper.Abner Brown is the principal villain in both novels, but plays a more prominent role in The Box of Delights. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Invisibility: One of the witches drops a vial of invisibility potion, which Kay makes use of. The gamekeeper's dogs can still detect him by scent, though. John Masefield became Poet Laureate in 1930, a position he held until his death in 1967. His well-known poems include Sea Fever.