Tom's Midnight Garden is a children's fantasy novel by English author Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. The story is about a twelve-year-old Tom who, while staying with his aunt and uncle, slips out at midnight and discovers a magical, mysterious Victorian garden where he befriends a young girl named Hatty. The novel has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, television, cinema, and the stage.
Pearce won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British author.[2] In 2007, for a celebration of the Carnegie Medal's 70th anniversary, a panel named Tom's Midnight Garden one of the top ten Medal-winning works[3] and the British public elected it the nation's second-favourite.[4]
Premise
Tom is a modern boy living under quarantine with his aunt and uncle in a city flat, part of a converted building that was a country house during the 1880s–1890s. At night he slips back in time to the old garden where he finds a girl playmate, called Hatty. Hatty is a princess or so she says.
Plot summary
When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles, Tom is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen. They live in an upstairs flat of a big house with no garden, only a tiny yard for parking. The former grounds of the big house have been sold for building and are occupied by modern houses. The elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, lives above them. Because Tom may be infectious, he is not allowed out to play, and he feels lonely. Without exercise he lies awake after midnight, restless, when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13. He gets up to investigate and discovers that the back door now opens on a large sunlit garden. However, when Tom checks the back door the following morning, the garden is no longer there.
Every night the clock strikes 13 and Tom returns to the Victorian era grounds. There he meets another lonely child, a girl called Hatty, and they become inseparable playmates. Tom sees the family occasionally, but only Hatty (and as is revealed later in the book, the gardener) sees him and the others believe she plays alone. Hatty is established to be an orphan sent to live with her aunt and three older male cousins after the death of her parents.
Tom writes daily accounts to his brother Peter, who follows the adventures during his recovery – and afterward, for Tom contrives to extend the stay with Aunt and Uncle. Gradually at first, Hatty grows up and passes Tom's age; he comes to realise that he is slipping to different points in the past. Finally she grows up at a faster rate, until she is an adult and is being courted by an acquaintance of hers who is nicknamed "Barty." At this stage in the book, the season in the old garden tends to be winter. Tom ingeniously obtains ice skates by having Hatty conceal her old pair in his room, where he subsequently finds them and joins her skating on the next night.
On the final night before Tom is due to go home, he goes downstairs to find the garden is not there. He frantically tries to find it, but crashes into a set of bins from the present–day courtyard, waking up several residents. He shouts Hatty's name in desperation, before his Uncle Alan finds him and puts the events down to Tom sleepwalking. The following morning, Mrs Bartholomew summons Tom to apologise, only to reveal herself as Hatty, having made the link when she heard him call her name. The events Tom experienced were real in Hatty's past; he has stepped into them by going into the garden at the times she dreamt of them. On the final night, she had instead been dreaming of her wedding with Barty.
After taking Tom home, Aunt Gwen comments on the strange way that Tom had said goodbye to Mrs Bartholomew when he left: he hugged her as if she were a little girl.
Themes and literary significance
The book is regarded as a classic. The final reunion between Tom, still a child, and the elderly Hatty is, many have argued, one of the most moving moments in children's fiction.[5]
In Written for Children (1965), John Rowe Townsend summarised, "If I were asked to name a single masterpiece of English children's literature since [the Second World War] ... it would be this outstandingly beautiful and absorbing book".[5] He retained that judgment in the second edition of that magnum opus (1983) and in 2011 repeated it, in a retrospective review of the novel.[6][7]
In the first chapter of Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Fiction, Margaret and Michael Rustin analyse the emotional resonances of Tom's Midnight Garden and describe its use of imagination and metaphor, also comparing it to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.[8]
Researcher Ward Bradley, in his review of various modern stories and books depicting Victorian British society, criticized Midnight Garden for "romanticizing the world of the 19th-century aristocratic mansions, making it a glittering 'lost paradise' contrasted with the drab reality of contemporary lower middle class Britain.(...) A child deriving an image of Victorian England from this engaging and well-written fairy tale would get no idea of the crushing poverty in the factories and slums from where mansion owners often derived their wealth".[9]
Time slip would be a popular device in British children's novels in this period, although this device arguably started with Mark Twain's adult satirical comedy A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), followed by Rudyard Kipling's children's book Puck of Pook's Hill (1906, with a succession of slips back into Britain's past), and Margaret Irwin's Still She Wished for Company (1924, combining ghosts and time slip), and Elizabeth Goudge's The Middle Window (1935, with a time-slip back to the era of Bonnie Prince Charlie). Time-slip was a popular theme in paranormal discussion, such as the Moberly–Jourdain incident, also known as the Ghosts of Petit Trianon or Versailles. This was an event that occurred on 10 August 1901 in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, involving two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924). Moberly and Jourdain claimed to have slipped back to the last days of pre-Revolutionary France, reported in their later book An Adventure (1911). Other successful examples of time-slip in children's books include Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time (1939, slipping back to the period of Mary, Queen of Scots), Ronald Welch's The Gauntlet (1951, slipping back to the Welsh Marches in the fourteenth century), Clive King's Stig of the Dump (1963, with a final chapter slipping back to the making of Stonehenge), Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy (1967, back to the First World War), and Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer (1969, back to 1918).
Allusions
The historical part of the book is set in the grounds of a mansion, which resembles the house in which the author grew up: the Mill House in Great Shelford, near Cambridge, England. Cambridge is represented in fictional form as Castleford throughout the book. At the time she was writing the book, the author was again living in Great Shelford, just across the road from the Mill House.[5] The Kitsons' (in past, the Melbournes') house is thought to be based on a house in Cambridge, near where Pearce studied during her time at university.[10] The theory of time of which the novel makes use is that of J. W. Dunne's influential 1927 work An Experiment with Time.[11]
2001, Adapted for the stage by David Wood, Samuel French ( ISBN0-573-05127-5)
2007 recognition
Since 1936, the professional association of British librarians has recognised the year's best new book for children with the Carnegie Medal. Philippa Pearce and Tom won the 1958 Medal.[2] For the 70th anniversary celebration in 2007, a panel of experts appointed by the children's librarians named Tom's Midnight Garden one of the top ten Medal-winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite.[3] It finished second in the public vote from that shortlist, between two books that were about forty years younger. Among votes cast from the UK, Northern Lights polled 40%, Tom's Midnight Garden 16%; Skellig 8%.[4][15] The winning author, Philip Pullman, graciously said: "Personally I feel they got the initials right but not the name. I don't know if the result would be the same in a hundred years' time; maybe Philippa Pearce would win then." Julia Eccleshare, Children's Books Editor for The Guardian newspaper, continued the theme: "Northern Lights is the right book by the right author. Philip is accurate in saying that the only contention was from the other PP. And, it must be said, Tom's Midnight Garden has lasted almost 60 years ... and we don't know that Northern Lights will do the same. But, yes. A very good winner."[4]
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.
The Carnegie Medal for Writing, established in 1936, is a British literary award that annually recognises one outstanding new English-language book for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), who calls it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing". CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award.
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).
Northern Lights is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published in 1995 by Scholastic UK. Set in a parallel universe, it follows the journey of Lyra Belacqua to the Arctic in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as "Dust".
The Carnegie Medal for Illustration is a British award that annually recognises "distinguished illustration in a book for children". It is conferred upon the illustrator by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) which inherited it from the Library Association. CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award, though their sponsorship and the removal of Greenaway’s name from the medal proved controversial.
The Borrowers is a children's fantasy novel by the English author Mary Norton, published by Dent in 1952. It features a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of an English house and "borrow" from the big people in order to survive. The Borrowers also refers to the series of five novels including The Borrowers and four sequels that feature the same family after they leave "their" house.
Ann Philippa Pearce OBE FRSL was an English author of children's books. Best known of them is the time-slip novel Tom's Midnight Garden, which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, as the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. Pearce was a commended runner-up for the Medal a further four times.
Sharon Creech is an American writer of children's novels. She was the first American winner of the Carnegie Medal for British children's books and the first person to win both the American Newbery Medal and the British Carnegie.
A Northern Light, or A Gathering Light in the U.K., is an American historical novel for young adults, written by Jennifer Donnelly and published by Harcourt in 2003. Set in northern Herkimer County, New York in 1906, it is based on the murder of Grace Brown case —the basis also for An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925).
The Moberly–Jourdain incident is a claim of time travel and hauntings made by Charlotte Anne Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924).
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a low fantasy novel for children by Penelope Lively, first published by Heinemann in 1973 with illustrations by Anthony Maitland. Set in present-day Oxfordshire, it features a boy and his modern family who are new in their English village, and seem beset by a poltergeist. Soon the boy makes acquaintance with the eponymous Thomas Kempe, ghost of a 17th-century resident sorcerer who intends to stay.
Eleanor Frances Jourdain was an English academic, Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, 1915 to 1924. She died of a sudden heart attack after being forced to resign her post.
Emily Gravett is an English author and illustrator of children's picture books. For her debut book Wolves published in 2005 and Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears published three years later, she won the annual Kate Greenaway Medal recognising the year's best-illustrated British children's book.
Dear Nobody is a realistic young-adult novel by Berlie Doherty, published by Hamilton in 1991. Set in the northern England city of Sheffield, it features an unplanned teenage pregnancy and tells the story of its effect on the teenagers and their families.
The Scarecrows is a young-adult novel by Robert Westall, published by Chatto & Windus in 1981. It is a psychological novel with a supernatural twist, featuring a thirteen-year-old boy's reaction to his mother's courtship and remarriage six years after his father's death. It deals with themes of rage, isolation and fear. Beside the inner themes, it "tells of a boy and his family brought to the brink of destruction by sinister external forces" and it may be called a ghost story. Its US Library of Congress Subject Headings are remarriage, stepfathers, and horror stories.
The Little Bookroom is a collection of twenty-seven stories for children by Eleanor Farjeon, published by Oxford University Press in 1955 with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. They were selected by the author from stories published earlier in her career. Most were in the fairy tale style.
Tom's Midnight Garden is a 1999 British-American family fantasy film directed by Willard Carroll and starring Nigel Le Vaillant, Marlene Sidaway and Serena Gordon. The screenplay concerns a boy who discovers a secret garden. The film was based on the novel Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, and filmed at Chenies Manor House in Buckinghamshire. The film was produced by Hyperion Pictures.
Susan Einzig (1922–2009) was a British illustrator, painter, printmaker and art teacher. She is best known for illustrating the children's book Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.
Samantha Angus is an English writer of historical adventure novels for children. She is the author of five books, including Soldier Dog, Captain, A Horse Called Hero, and The House on Hummingbird Island. Her novels deal with bleak moments of British and colonial history.
Minnow on the Say is a children's novel written by English writer Philippa Pearce, first published by Oxford University Press in 1955. Like many of her books, the novel is set in the area where she grew up, specifically in an old mill near Cambridge. It was published in the United States in 1958 under the title The Minnow Leads to Treasure. The novel has been twice adapted as a television drama.
↑ Townsend, John Rowe. Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature. Second edition, Lippincott, 1983 ( ISBN0-397-32052-3), p. 247.
↑ "Writer's choice 317: John Rowe Townsend". 16 August 2011. normblog: The weblog of Norman Geras. Retrieved 2012-11-18. This is Townsend's retrospective review of Tom's Midnight Garden under a short preface by the host.
↑ "Loneliness, Dreaming and Discovery: Tom's Midnight Garden ", Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Fiction by Margaret and Michael Rustin, Karnac Books, 2002, pp. 27-39.
↑ Bradley, Ward D. "Literary Depictions of Victorian Britain", pp. 87, 115.
↑ Roni Natov and Geraldine DeLuca; "An Interview with Philippa Pearce", The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol.9 1985, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp.75-78.
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