Period Piece - A Cambridge Childhood: A Cambridge Childhood

by Gwen Raverat

Book Overview

Period Piece is the classic memoir of a Cambridge childhood, written by Charles Darwin's granddaughter. It evokes a time when long summer days were disturbed by nothing noisier than a horse, and long... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571067425
• ISBN13: 9780571067428
• Release Date: January 1960
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

a lovely trip to the past

First off, I notice I've been using the word "charming" in a few reviews lately. So I will not refer to this book as being charming. It is, however, delightful, appealing, winning, and entrancing. It is a memoir of the author's childhood in the late Victorian period, and though her grandfather was Charles Darwin, and most of the relatives she profiles are Darwins or Wedgwoods, several of whom had quite distinguished careers, one doesn't read the book to find out about the lives of famous people. In fact, no one does anything particularly noteworthy in the book at all. What delights is rather the affectionate picture of a time and place, and the wonderful wonderful voice of the writer: "The first religious experience that I can remember is getting under the nursery table to pray that the dancing mistress might be dead before we got to the Dancing Class." "By all accounts I was a charming baby. As I have never been considered particularly charming since then, I think it only just to myself to set this on record...How I have gone off since then!" The book is illustrated thoughout with the author's own line drawings, with captions which quite often made me giggle with glee. A great escape from the tumult of one's own hurried life.

a wonderful window into an amazing family

Darwin fanatics and Jane Austen fans will gobble up this delicious dessert. Written by Darwin's grandaughter (Raverat was George's daughter born too late to know her illustrious grandfather personally)PERIOD PIECE contains both a wealth of Family Stories that helps humanize the usual image of the Great Victorian Sage and some real (although often tongue-in-cheek) insights into Late-Victorian/Edwardian Society. As Raverat says in the Preface, the book doesn't really have a beginning or an end, it is easily dipped-in-to at any point & you will have to be totally lacking in a sense of humor not to come away both charmed & informed.

Treat yourself

An absolute masterpiece of comic writing. Ms. Raverat drawings mesh perfectly with her loving, but not pious, treatment of her eccentric aunts and uncles. A deft ironist, a great memoir of late 19th century Cambridge. I promise you will force this book on everyone you love and they will thank you for it.

All this and the Darwins too

This is a really lovely book, perfect for reading at bedtime or in the garden under the apple tree on a summer's afternoon. Gwen Raverat writes vividly with chapters by theme rather than chronologically and and gives a rounded view of her childhood experiences and the Darwin family of uncles and aunts.

Terrific, funny stuff with the flavor of another society.

Wood-cut artist Gwen Raverat was associated with the Bloomsbury group, and grew up with the Keynes children in nineteenth-century Cambridge. Here, she tells the story of growing up amid the fads and fetishes not only of academic and Victorian England, but of her extremely individual family, children and grandchildren of Charles Darwin. Raverat's wood-cut illustrations are as illuminating and funny as her text.