After being chased from the home of an upper-class young girl called Ellie, chimney-sweep Tom falls asleep and tumbles into a river. There he is transformed into a 'water-baby' and his adventures truly begin. Beneath the surface, he enters a magical world full of strange and wonderful creatures, where he must prove his moral worth in order to earn what he truly desires. One of the most unusual children's books ever written, The Water-Babies, subtitled 'A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby', was originally intended as a satire in support of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and explores many of the issues at the forefront of biologists' minds at the time. First published as a complete novel in 1863, Charles Kingsley's classic tale also explores ideas about religion, the Victorian education system and the working conditions of children and the poor. With glorious black and white illustrations by W. Heath Robinson and an introduction by author and journalist Christina Hardyment. Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Publicada dos años antes que Alicia en el País de las Maravillas, Los niños del agua se ha confundido a menudo con un relato meramente infantil aunque, al igual que la novela de Lewis Carroll, supera con creces cualquier barrera de edad. Adaptada al cine por Walt Disney en 1935, narra la historia de Tom, un deshollinador de 10 años, explotado cruelmente por su amo Grimes, que cae por la chimenea de una casa de campo a donde ha sido llevado a trabajar. El accidente provoca un enorme revuelo y Tom huye hacia un estanque en el que, aparentemente, se ahoga. Pero no muere y se transforma en un niño del agua, que debera madurar con la ayuda de las hadas y las criaturas marinas hasta convertirse en un nuevo ser mas libre y responsable. Kingsley introduce en la novela todos los asuntos de la vida que le interesaban: Con una arquitectura soprendente, intenta entablar un dialogo con el lector en el que todo es posible gracias a la fantasia. Indaga en la naturaleza como reflejo de la realidad divina y aporta algunas ideas respecto a la degeneracion de las especies que tardarian mas de un cuarto de siglo en ser aceptadas. En 1889 se publico una edicion especial ilustrada por Linley Sambourne con dibujos tan fantasticos, inquietantes y sorprendentes como el texto. Todos ellos se han incluido, por primera vez en España, en este volumen.
A picture of life in the fifth century must needs contain much which will be painful to any reader, and which the young and innocent will do well to leave altogether unread. It has to represent a very hideous, though a very great, age; one of those critical and cardinal eras in the history of the human race, in which virtues and vices manifest themselves side by sideeven, at times, in the same personwith the most startling openness and power. One who writes of such an era labours under a troublesome disadvantage. He dare not tell how evil people were; he will not be believed if he tells how good they were. In the present case that disadvantage is doubled; for while the sins of the Church, however heinous, were still such as admit of being expressed in words, the sins of the heathen world, against which she fought, were utterly indescribable; and the Christian apologist is thus compelled, for the sake of decency, to state the Churchs case far more weakly than the facts deserve.Not, be it ever remembered, that the slightest suspicion of immorality attaches either to the heroine of this book, or to the leading philosophers of her school, for several centuries. Howsoever base and profligate their disciples, or the Manichees, may have been, the great Neo-Platonists were, as Manes himself was, persons of the most rigid and ascetic virtue.For a time had arrived, in which no teacher who did not put forth the most lofty pretensions to righteousness could expect a hearing. That Divine Word, who is The Light who lighteth every man which cometh into the world, had awakened in the heart of mankind a moral craving never before felt in any strength, except by a few isolated philosophers or prophets.
