Saturday, 15 August 2009

27 scuggery or 'I wish I had a sister like Ruth'

august 09

120mm x 180mm
36 pages
24 copies

A piece occasioned by the chance find of the 1917 'Chatterbox' annual of stories for schoolchildren. Reading a number of its tales I had the impression that I was actually reading a collection of themes, to which the characters were more or less incidental. Most feature a challenge to a boy or girl's mettle, whether this arrives in the form of adapting to a new school, rescuing a sleepwalker, or journeying through the Canadian muskeg. Hence Scuggery is collated from the original writings entirely on the basis of themes, to which place, situation, character and gender are fully interchangeable.

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