Allen & Unwin Period Piece book Biography English Paperback 288 pages

This new edition celebrates the 65th anniversary of the publication of Period Piece, which has never been out of print.

Period Piece is the classic memoir of a Cambridge childhood, written by Charles Darwin's granddaughter. It evokes a time when long summer days were disturbed by nothing noisier than a horse, and long winter nights were lit only by candle or gas lamp. It is a shrewd, touching and comic portrait of eccentric relations, and of Cambridge society when it was small enough to be treated as an extension of the family. As a young girl Gwen thought it impossible that she could ever succeed as an artist, and yet the observations of the small incidents of life, recorded here in delightful prose and beautiful illustrations, reveal an artist's careful eye.

Gwen Raverat was Charles Darwin's granddaughter. She was a wood engraver. Her memoir Period Piece