Discover this extraordinary lost classic of nature writing - a fable about wildness and the desire to escape

Beautifully illustrated by beloved artist and The Lost Words creator Jackie Morris

'A beautiful classic, as miraculous and awe-inspiring as the nine-year-old author [and] Jackie Morris portrays the artistic elegance of the eastern ink with the wisdom of the West' Xinran, author of The Good Women of China

Little Eepersip doesn't want to live in a house with doors and windows and a roof, so she runs away to live in the wild - first in the Meadow, then by the Sea, and finally in the Mountain. Her heartbroken parents follow her at first, bringing her back home to 'safety' and locking her up in the stifling square of the house. But she slips away once more, following her wild heart out of the door and far away...

Barbara Newhall Follett was just thirteen years old when she published The House Without Windows in 1927. The book went on to become a million-copy bestseller. Years later, as an adult herself, Barbara followed in the footsteps of her radical heroine - dissatisfied with the limitations of life as a respectable married woman, she walked out of her house one day and simply disappeared.

Penguin are delighted to republish Barbara Newhall Follett's extraordinary feminist fable for the next generation of nature lovers and escapees to discover and cherish. Newly introduced by Jackie Morris, and filled with her beautifully inked artwork, The House Without Windows is an irresistible paean to the natural world and its transcendent effect on the human heart.

Praise for The Lost Words

'Breathtaking . . . Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at' New Statesman

'Luminous' Sunday Times

'Sumptuous . . . A book combining meticulous wordcraft with exquisite illustrations deftly restores language describing the natural world to the children's lexicon...The Lost Words is a beautiful book and an important one' Observer

This book has been graded for interest at 9-11 years.

There are 240 pages in this book. This book was published 2019 by Penguin Books Ltd .

Caroline Pitcher's story Kevin the Blue won the Independent Story of the Year Award in 1993. Caroline's first book for Frances Lincoln was The Snow Whale with Jackie Morris, chosen as one of Child Education's Best Books of 1996 and shortlisted for the 1997 Children's Book Award. Barbara Newhall Follett was an American child prodigy. Born in 1914, she published her first novel, The House Without Windows, aged twelve. One year later she published another, The Voyage of the Norman D. , based on her own experiences sailing round Nova Scotia without her parents at thirteen years old. Barbara Newhall Follett walked out of her home with $30 in her pocket one evening shortly before Christmas 1939 and was never seen again. The mystery of her disappearance has never been solved.