Books by Barbara Newhall Follett

'An enchanting book. These pages simply quiver with the beauty, happiness and vigour of forests, seas and mountains . . . I can safely promise joy to any reader of it. Perfection' Eleanor Farjeon, Winner of the Carnegie Medal and The Hans Christian Andersen AwardDiscover this extraordinary lost classic of nature writing - a fable about wildness and the desire to escape - beautifully illustrated by beloved artist and The Lost Words creator Jackie Morris'Miraculous - a fearless odyssey into a dreamtime of wildness and enchantment. Gloriously illuminated by Jackie Morris's moving art, this is a work of strange power for our own bewildered times' Nick DrakeLittle Eepersip doesn't want to live in a house with doors and windows and a roof, so she runs away to live in the wild - first in the Meadow, then by the Sea, and finally in the Mountain. Her heartbroken parents follow her at first, bringing her back home to 'safety' and locking her up in the stifling square of the house. But she slips away once more, following her wild heart out of the door and far away...Barbara Newhall Follett was just thirteen years old when she published The House Without Windows in 1927. The book went on to become a million-copy bestseller. Years later, as an adult herself, Barbara followed in the footsteps of her radical heroine - dissatisfied with the limitations of life as a respectable married woman, she walked out of her house one day and simply disappeared.Penguin are delighted to republish Barbara Newhall Follett's extraordinary feminist fable for the next generation of nature lovers and escapees to discover and cherish. Newly introduced by Jackie Morris, and filled with her beautifully inked artwork, The House Without Windows is an irresistible paean to the natural world and its transcendent effect on the human heart.'A classic, as miraculous and awe-inspiring as the nine-year-old author. Jackie Morris portrays the artistic elegance of the eastern ink with the wisdom of the West' Xinran, author of The Good Women of China Praise for The Lost Words'Breathtaking . . . Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at' New Statesman'Luminous' Sunday Times'Sumptuous . . . A book combining meticulous wordcraft with exquisite illustrations deftly restores language describing the natural world to the children's lexicon...The Lost Words is a beautiful book and an important one' Observer

By the age of fourteen, Barbara Newhall Follett had published two books with Alfred A. Knopf: 1927's enchanting The House Without Windows and Eepersip's Life There and 1928's The Voyage of the Norman D., the account of her journey from New Haven to Nova Scotia as "cabin boy" on a lumber schooner. Both books received rave reviews.But that same year Barbara's life turned upside down when her father left his family for a younger woman. With no income, Barbara and her mother went to sea with their typewriters, hoping to earn a living by writing about their adventures. They spent several months in the West Indies, then sailed through the Panama Canal to the South Seas, where they spent several more months before eventually returning to East Coast. After living in New York City for two years, Barbara's wanderlust returned when she and her future husband embarked on a 600-mile walk in the mountains of New England along the nascent Appalachian Trail. After spending another year exploring Spain and Germany, the couple married and settled in Boston. But in 1939 the marriage soured, and on December 7th of that year, 25-year-old Barbara walked out of the apartment, never to be seen or heard from again. Happily, Barbara left behind a wealth of letters, poems, stories, essays, and her unpublished novel, Lost Island. This book, compiled and edited by Barbara's half-nephew, tells the story of Barbara's extraordinary life through her own words as well as those of her family and correspondents.