Clare Leighton – illustratör

Assembled here are seventy-eight stories from six of the "ballad-singingest, tale-tellingest" residents of the eastern Kentucky mountain country. Based on stories rooted in European traditions from German fairy tales to Irish hero stories to Greek myths, the tales had been handed down through generations of telling before Marie Campbell collected them in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Readers will recognize the story of Snow White in "A Stepchild That Was Treated Mighty Bad," while "Three Shirts and a Golden Finger Ring" recalls the fairy tale of the Seven Swans. "The Fellow That Married A Dozen Times" is a lively rendition of "Bluebeard." As the narrators cautioned Marie Campbell again and again, "Tale-telling is nigh about faded out in the mountain country," but Tales from the Cloud Walking Country offers a lasting record of history, cultural heritage, language, and good old-fashioned fun.

Clare Leighton was one of the finest engravers of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, when she settled in the countryside with her long-term partner, the political journalist Henry Noel Brailsford, she turned her creativity to the land. Gardening became her passion. Her obsession. This is the story of the garden she carved from meadowland deep in the Chiltern Hills. "Phrases and images fill you with delight...This is the most honest writing I've ever read". (Carol Klein).