Naomi Mitchison – författare

A REDISCOVERED FANTASY CLASSIC - INTRODUCED BY SAMANTHA SHANNON'Read it now' URSULA K. LE GUIN'Quiet and thoughtful, playful and wayward, rich with exquisite worldbuilding detail. I only wish - as an author who always dreamed of dragons - that I had discovered Travel Light sooner' SAMANTHA SHANNON'No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison' OBSERVER'I felt, very powerfully, that I had been waiting for Travel Light' AMAL EL-MOHTAR, author of THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR'Disarmingly familiar, like a memory only half-recalled. You will love this book' HOLLY BLACK, author of BOOK OF NIGHT'Utterly contemporary' DAILY MAIL***Riding on that horse you would need nothing, no cloak even. She dropped it on the edge of the marshland. Nothing. You could travel light.Halla is the daughter of a king, cast out as a baby into a world of danger and enchantment. She is raised by bears, lives amongst dragons, converses with Valkyries and avoids warmongering heroes. But times are changing, and an encounter with the Wanderer, Odin All-Father, finds her at a crossroads. Cutting a fold from his night-blue cloak and laying it over her shoulders, the Wanderer sends her on a journey into the unknown. With only her bear-like kindness, her dragonish wisdom and her own fierce spirit to guide her, Halla must forge her own path . . . Weaving folklore, fairy tale and Norse myth into a shimmering, witty and slyly subversive tapestry, Travel Light is a rediscovered gem of classic fantasy writing - perfect for fans of Tolkien, Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin.

An enchanting collection that introduces the author and activist Naomi Mitchison to a new generation of readersThe Fourth Pig, originally published in 1936, is a wide-ranging collection of fairy tales, poems, and ballads that reflect the hopes and forebodings of their era but also resonate with those of today. From a retelling of “Hansel and Gretel” to the experimental title story, a dark departure from “The Three Little Pigs,” this book is a testament to the talents of Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999), who was an irrepressible phenomenon—a prominent Scottish political activist as well as a prolific author. Mitchison’s work, exemplified by the tales in this superb new edition, is stamped with her characteristic sharp wit, magical invention, and vivid political and social consciousness. Marina Warner, the celebrated scholar of myths and fairy tales and writer of fiction, provides an insightful introduction to Mitchison as a remarkable writer and personality.

Introduced by Naomi Mitchison. Set over two thousand years ago on the calm and fertile shores of the Black Sea, Naomi Mitchison's The Corn King and the Spring Queen tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic. Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik's power. But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest - a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen.

'As in a good novel, the people, their feelings and reactions are instantly recognisable and as fresh and immediate today as they were then' GUARDIAN'She writes vividly and movingly' DAILY TELEGRAPH26th September 1939. I am beginning to wonder whether the point of a place like this may be that it will keep alive certain ideas of freedom which might easily be destroyed in the course of this totalitarian war...Born in Edinburgh, Naomi Mitchison spent most of the Second World War in the fishing village of Carradale on Kintyre, her home until her death aged 101. Her life was crowded with incident, and her attitudes to events predictably forceful, original and honest.Throughout the war she kept a diary at the request of the research organisation Mass Observation, in which she recorded both the momentous events of the time, and also how one (albeit extraordinary) family and their friends lived, what they hoped for and what actually happened. Her diaries developed far beyond the confines of a social document.Written with the passion of a poet combined with the intellectual curiosity of a radial thinker, they provide a unique and valuable document of the period.

Louisa 'Maya' Haldane was the widow of physiologist John Scott Haldane, and the mother of J. B. S. Haldane and Naomi Mitchison. In these memoirs she gives a remarkably detailed account of the life of the well-to-do in the second half of the nineteenth century - in Ireland, Scotland and the Con-tinental spas as well as in England - as seen through the eyes of a growing girl and an independently-minded young woman. The story continues up to the time of the First World War, with chapters focusing on particular topics: her education, her husband's early career, the position of servants in town and country, a young lady's wardrobe. We are reminded graphically of the high feeling that ran in the country during the Boer War, Queen Victoria's Jubilees and her funeral, all of which are still vivid in Mrs Haldane's memory. This fascinating material is informed and enlivened by a certain dry wit, nowhere more telling than in personal anecdote: particularly in the account of her father's experi-ences when, during a sea voyage for his health - always precarious through excessive perusal of medical literature - he unexpectedly found himself obliged to take over the duties of British Consul in Samoa. The author's objective irony, together with her remarkably clear and detailed memory for people and places, helps to re-create an ambience and moral climate of a now remote era.