Desert Islands opens with a captivating essay on the romance of islands and castaways in literature and life, and the associations that have arisen in the imagination of readers in every generation. The essay leads on to over 200 pages of what de la Mare himself calls 'a rambling commentary', in the form of an anthology or commonplace book on every conceivable aspect of this teeming subject. There are notes, reflections and quotations from a lifetime's reading on wrecks, maroons, pirates, utopias, goats, hallucinations, exotic foods, misers, punishments, solitude , Darwin, parrots, idols, saints, hermits, maps, spices, drugs . . . and of course Daniel Defoe.
Desert Islands is the perfect bedside or holiday book. It also playfully boasts a subtitle of rococo inventiveness and one of the longest you will ever read!
'A vast treasure chest, a bewildering collection . . . to dazzle and fascinate everyone who lifts the lid.' Geoffrey Grigson
Kids will love this hilarious fairy tale adventure packed with clever twists, familiar characters and page-turning fun.
The second book in a fabulous new magical, middle-grade series filled with adventure, wonder and wildness,
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Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was born in Charlton, Kent. In 1907 he published his first collection of poems he soon established a wide popular reputation with volumes like The Listeners. He wrote poetry and short stories for younger readers; Peacock Pie (1913) is now considered a twentieth-century classic.
Carolina Rabei was born in 1989 in Moldova. She mo
