Once upon a time, working in an offal shop in Smithfield, London’s meat market, I was approached by Bob, our tripe dresser, who reckoned that being a writer, I could surely recommend a novel for his Mallorca holiday. Novel experience, twice over.
I lent him a football novel by Brian Glanville, who’d written about the game in a non-fiction way for the Sunday Times pretty well since football was “soccer” and the players all British on less than £20 a week.
Bob came back from Mallorca delighted with the book, which he’d “even finished”.
He took me to our pub, celebrating the loss of his literary virginity. He’d never be scared of a book again.
So, would he like me now to suggest another title?
Sure as I’d cross the scale at 14 stone, he replied, he’d ask again next year when his holiday was due. Reading a book right through had been a great experience — plus it impressed wife and kids.
I can’t truly remember the first book I had wholly to myself. But lodged in heart and brain is Tales from Ebony by Harcourt Williams (though he didn’t originate the stories but rewrote them to read on BBC’s Children’s Hour circa 1933).
He in turn knew several from his very first book on his dad’s knee, Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm (1810). The Grimms were turned on by Entertainments for Little Ones (1634) and The Nights of Straparola (1550), by, respectively, the exuberant Italian storytellers Giambattista Basile and Giovanni Straparola. They were inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron (probably not their first book, being wholly unsuitable for a kid on its father’s knee).
I read — still read — Tales from Ebony to my descendants, though in today’s soft culture they’re sometimes shocked by the harsh endings of stories such as 'The Cat and the Mouse', when the former eats the latter after sharing house for a year. 'The Fisherman and his Wife' has a lip-biting finale too, when the magical Flounder denies the wife’s final request to be Lord of the Universe, and returns them to their hovel.
Whether endings are fair can always be discussed, but I have trouble with one question: “Why did you mark the stories in such a funny way?”
I try to explain that it was my first book, absolutely mine, and I was just getting used at school to having work marked out of 10 or 100. I was inventing some new markings, thus 3/17 for 'Gallimaufry' and 170/1,200 for its illustration. But 6/6 for 'The House in the Wood' and 17/17 for its illustration. The pic for 'Rapunzel' earned 15/18 — actually the illustrator, C. F. Tunnicliffe, deserved 100,000/100,000 for every picture there, but I awarded that only to his 'Ugly Duckling'.
I wonder now, how many people recall their first book, and if it was read at a parent’s knee.
Do you remember your first book?
Best wishes,
Alex Hamilton
About Alex: Guest blogger Alex Hamilton is an award-winning travel writer. He contributes articles 'The growth of travel guidebooks' and 'One hundred years of fiction bestsellers' for the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook.
I do! Little Women. The first "big book" I read through (at age 9, I think). It was a Reader's Digest Companion book, so I could flip it over, and read Little Men immediately afterwards. I enjoyed the experience so much, I went on to read the WHOLE Companion Library series. My 6 year old daughter has just begun reading Little Women - in Italian, though. I'm loving her questions!