Dodie Smith

Valerie Grove

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Abridged Edition

Penguin Readers Level 4: I Capture the Castle (ELT Graded Reader)

A special edition of the coming-of-age classic

I Capture the Castle

Stop What You’re Doing and Read…To Your Daughter: I Capture the Castle & The Secret Garden

I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers

Everyone I've passed it on to has found it a hit - it works every time, for absolutely everybody

Smith rivals Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate series for 1930s toff charm

A deliciously evocative portrait of England

Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering timelessness clings to its pages. A thousand and one cheers for its reissue. A +

It is an occasion worth celebrating when a sparkling novel, a work of wit, irony and feeling is brought back into print after an absence of many years. So uncork the champagne for I Capture the Castle

This rite of passage story about a precocious teenager and her eccentric family is romantic, off-beat and totally magical

Much more fun than the reader has any right to expect

It's as fresh as if it were written this morning and as classic as Jane Austen. I'm very happy to have met it

A good story, flourishing characters, and the most persuasive narrative voice

A classic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism

A beautiful coming-of-age novel about first love

Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. 
 
Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas, and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. 
 
However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. 
 
'I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers' Joanna Trollope 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling

Dorothy Gladys 'Dodie' Smith was born in 1896 in Lancashire and she was one of the most successful female dramatists of her generation. Her first novel, I Capture the Castle, was written when she lived in America during the 1940's and marked her crossover debut from playwright to novelist. The novel became an immediate success and was produced as a play in 1954. She has written numerous other novels but is best known today for The Hundred and One Dalmatians, a story for younger readers. The Hundred and One Dalmatians became the basis of two Disney films.

'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling 
 
'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. 
 
Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. 
 
'I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers' Joanna Trollope 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

I Capture the Castle

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Dodie Smith

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