The Midnight Folk (Kay Harker)

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Twas the Night Before Christmas: Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children of the 21st Century" (2012) being Pamela McColl "smoke-free" edit of Clement Clarke Moore's poem Kay's toys (known as "the guards") have been taken away from him at the start of the book, apparently because they will remind him of his parents; there is a strong implication that Kay's parents are deceased. The guards play little part in the main narrative but have a critical role in the final recovery of the treasure.

A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", 1823) attributed to Clement Clarke Moore Caroline Louisa is installed as Kay's guardian at the end of The Midnight Folk, having appeared earlier in the novel as one of Kay's supernatural helpers. She remains Kay's guardian throughout The Box of Delights. In The Midnight Folk, Masefield includes no chapter breaks at all, which gives the narrative an unbroken, dreamlike feeling. The separation between one day and night and the next is tenuous, and as I read, I sensed time moving differently. Strange, unsettling things happen throughout the book, all of which are received very evenly and calmly by Kay Harker, the young protagonist. The tone of the writing lures me in to accept everything just as Kay does, with the result that the book is illogical but perfect. I love the way Masefield brings together tropes from mythology, fairy tale, Arthurian legend, pirate adventure, and the search for lost treasure. Having pieces of the past revealed to Kay little by little really drew me into the story. And the way the characters across several generations share the same names was fantastic. Madeleine L’Engle wrote the afterword in the edition I read, and that makes perfect sense to me, since she took that idea of names across generations for her novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet.The Midnight Folk is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield first published in 1927. It is about a boy, Kay Harker, who sets out to discover what became of a fortune stolen from his seafaring great grandfather Aston Tirrold Harker (in reality, Aston Tirrold is a village in Oxfordshire). The treasure is also sought by a coven of witches who are seeking it for their own ends. Kay's governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer is a member of the coven. The witches are led or guided by the wizard Abner Brown. The Box of Delights is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield. It is a sequel to The Midnight Folk, and was first published in 1935. It is also known as When The Wolves Were Running. As has been pointed out to me, at times The Midnight Folk feels like a mash-up between Treasure Island and Halloween, what with ecclesiastical gold and South American settings and a clandestine witches' coven meeting at at dead of night. But it is much more complex than that: the three ears of the Harker arms underscore several trios of themes.

Masefield’s first volume of oetry, Salt-Water Ballads, was published in 1902, however, it was not until the publication of The Everlasting Mercy in 1911 that he made his mark on the literary scene. The success of his second book was followed by the publication of several long narrative poems, including Dauber (1914) and Reynard the Fox (1919). a b Kingsley, Madeleine (17 November 1984), "A Box Full of Magic", Radio Times, pp.101–103 , retrieved 14 October 2017 Funny little cat takes funny little boy on all sorts of funny adventures. This is a funny dream of book. And this is a funny, dreamy cat named Digsy: Will still try the next book ( Box of Delights) which is apparently more of a classic and perhaps the author learned lessons from book one and applied them to book two. Fingers crossed! I know 'The Box of Delights' is equally bonkers and arguably just as much a series of episodes strung together, but surely it has more of a sense of plot? I haven't read it: perhaps the BBC adaptation is more of a rescue job that it is given credit for. I can see the potential for adaptation in this one, with its imaginative and visual sensibility and many a vivid character to enjoy (though the fact that several of them speak with an idiom as incoherent as the overall storyline doesn't help). What I can't imagine is reading this to a child, less still a child reading it for themselves.He has written a book which will be a source of delight to children of future generations well as his own, one that ranks with such masterpieces in this genre The Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland and Sylvie and Bruno. — The Northern Whig, 1927 [1] Part of my own ease comes from remembering myself at the same age, with the same sense of life being a dreamscape where reality was of one substance with imaginings. Maybe a lot of the novel's strange-yet-familiar quality comes from the author's own remembered past being a kind of foreign country, where "they do things differently". In 1885 orphan Kay Harker finds himself under the guardianship of the distant Sir Theopompous and the stern tutelage of an unnamed governess. His former companions, a collection of stuffed toys, have evidently been removed, their place taken by the declension of Latin adjectives for 'sharp', and by exercises in French, Divinity and the like. Piers Torday (30 November 2017). "Long before Harry Potter, The Box of Delights remade children's fantasy". The Guardian . Retrieved 7 January 2018. His teenage experiences as a naval cadet and then in the merchant navy provided the seafaring subplot in the novel, though his maiden voyage in 1894 to Chile, when he was not yet 16, was ruinous to his health. Nevertheless, on his return home to recuperate his authoritarian aunt insisted on him pursuing this career, to his dismay.

In 1894, Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile. He recorded his experiences while sailing through the extreme weather. Upon reaching Chile, Masefield suffered from sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steam ship. Flynn, Simon: "A Magic Curiously Suited to Radio?": The BBC and The Box of Delights. The Journal of the John Masefield Society, No. 12 (May 2003), pp.21–35. The Midnight Folk is written as one piece. There are no chapter divisions. Division within the text is obtained by moving from prose to verse or even song in some places.In 1958, John Keir Cross wrote a radio adaptation of the book for the BBC. It was broadcast on Children's Hour in five parts during the lead up to Christmas that year. Patricia Hayes played Kay Harker and the narrator was Richard Hurndall. [4] John Masefield adapted an opera libretto from his book, also incorporating elements of The Midnight Folk, which was eventually set to music in the late 1980s by the British composer Robert Steadman. The Midnight Folk introduces readers to Kay Harker, the orphaned boy who is also the hero of John Masefield’s classic Christmas fantasy, The Box of Delights. Kay lives in a vast old country house, and is looked after by an unpleasant duo: the oily and egregious Sir Theopompous and the petulant and punitive Sylvia Daisy Pouncer. In her zeal to educate Kay on the finer points of Latin grammar, Sylvia Daisy has even taken away all of Kay’s toys. Life seems very dull, until out of an old family portrait steps Kay’s great-grandfather, a sea captain, who, if legend is to be believed, made off with a fabulous treasure. On a more sober note, this is admittedly very English and very 1920’s in flavor, presenting an additional challenge to readers a full century later. But that may in fact be part of its charm — it takes one into another world altogether, leaving disbelief far behind.

Abner Brown is the principal villain in both novels, but plays a more prominent role in The Box of Delights. The current owner of the box is an old Punch and Judy man called Cole Hawlings whom Harker meets at the railway station. They develop an instant rapport, which leads Hawlings to confide that he is being chased by a magician called Abner Brown and his gang, which includes Harker's former governess. For safety, Hawlings (who turns out to be the medieval philosopher and alleged magician Ramon Llull) entrusts the box to Harker. The schoolboy then goes on to have many adventures as he protects the box from those who wish to use it for bad deeds.Young Kay (whom we may imagine as around seven) inhabits a magic realist world midway between dreams, imagination and daily life, one inhabited by a combination of guardians and governesses, servants and smugglers, wild animals and witches, knights and toys, ancestors and archvillains. Masefield the children’s writers is unbeatable… The Midnight Folk is a truly remarkable book.”– Daily Telegraph (London) When Masefield was 23, he met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, who was 35. Educated in classics and English Literature, and a mathematics teacher, Constance was a perfect match for Masefield despite the difference in age. The couple had two children (Judith, born in 1904, and Lewis, in 1910). In 1930, due to the death of Robert Bridges, a new Poet Laureate was needed. King George V appointed Masefield, who remained in office until his death in 1967. Masefield took his appointment seriously and produced a large quantity of verse. Poems composed in his official capacity were sent to The Times. Masefield’s humility was shown by his inclusion of a stamped envelope with each submission so that his composition could be returned if it were found unacceptable for publication.