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Biographical note
Dodie Smith was born in Lancashire in 1896. She trained at RADA and went on to carve out a career as both a novelist and a playwright, producing seven novels and ten plays. She wrote I Capture the Castle during the Second World War while living in America with her husband, and it was a great commercial and critical success when published in 1949. Some seven years later her children’s classic, The Hundred and One Dalmatians – inspired by her own beloved Dalmatian, Pongo – was published. It remains the work for which she is probably most well-known, in large part thanks to the iconic Walt Disney film based on it. Dodie Smith died in 1990.Step into a whimsical world of love, laughter, and the struggles of an eccentric English family in Dodie Smith's timeless classic, I Capture the Castle.
One of BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World, this quirky coming-of-age tale is an affectionately drawn portrait of one of the funniest families in literature. Penned by the author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, the story unfolds through the gloriously witty and shrewd diaries of Cassandra Mortmain.
The Mortmains have been rattling around in a vast, decrepit castle for years, gradually slipping into financial ruin. Mortmain is crippled by writer's block, while his beautiful second wife Topaz struggles to be a dutiful stepmother to Rose, Cassandra and Thomas. Rose needs a husband, Thomas an education, but Cassandra lives for her writing. She chronicles the trials of family life, the impact of a glamorous American family's arrival, and the agonies of falling in love for the first time.
This stunning edition from the Macmillan Collector's Library features a clothbound cover, gold foiled edges, a ribbon marker, and illustrations by Ruth Steed. An afterword by publisher Anna South completes this perfect gift or treat for any book lover.