The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading

Do you remember the first time you fell in love with a book?

The stories we read as children extend far beyond our childhoods; they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past – collective and individual, remembered and imagined – and invite us to dream up different futures. In a pioneering history of children’s literature, from the ancient world to the present day, Sam Leith reveals the magic of our most cherished stories, and the ways in which they have shaped and consoled entire generations. Excavating the complex lives of beloved writers, Leith offers a humane portrait of a genre – one acutely sensitive to its authors.

Sam Leith

Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator. His forthcoming book, The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, is out in September.

After he graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, Leith worked at the revived satirical magazine Punch, before moving to the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, where he served as literary editor until 2008. He now writes for several publications, including the Financial Times, Prospect, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Guardian. He had a regular column in the Monday London Evening Standard and appears as a panellist on BBC Two’s The Review Show. Leith’s first three non-fiction books are Dead Pets, Sod’s Law and You Talkin’ to Me? His first novel, The Coincidence Engine, was published in 2011. Leith became literary editor of The Spectator in September 2014. In November 2016, he was named the winner of the Columnist of the Year award at The Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards.