Katharine M. Briggs

First published in 1955, Katherine Briggs' story about the hobgoblin whose charge it is to protect and influence the unloving Puritan family who come to live at Widford Manor after the Civil War is a classic of English children's writing. Hobberdy Dick's benign works in favour of the characters carry the story from sadness to delight; but it is his character as ancient guardian ...

Fairies fascinate young and old alike. To some they offer tantalizing glimpses of other worlds, to others a subversive counterpoint to human arrogance and weakness. Like no other author, Katharine Briggs throughout her work communicated the thrill and delight of the world of fairies, and in this book she articulated for the first time the history of that world in tradition and literature. From ev...