The House Without Windows

The House Without Windows

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

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

© Barbara Newhall 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

  • One of the strangest, most enchanting and mystifying stories I've read in recent years . . . It's beautiful, bonkers and brimming with the abundance and richness of nature and a life lived with no boundaries. Also Jackie's intro and illustrations provide a depth and context that only lifts the book and its story higher.
    Rob Cowen

About the authors

Barbara Newhall Follett

Barbara Newhall Follett was an American child prodigy novelist. 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 disappeared shortly before Christmas 1939, leaving her home with $30 in her pocket, and was never seen again. The mystery of her disappearance has never been solved.
Learn More

Jackie Morris (Illustrator)

Jackie Morris is the bestselling and award-winning co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, two books which have captured the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. She also illustrated and introduced a new edition of Barbara Newhall Follett's lost classic of wild literature, The House Without Windows. As an author, Jackie Morris has produced over forty beloved children's books; as an artist she has also worked with the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian, among others. She won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year for The Lost Words in 2018. Jackie lives in a cottage on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire, where she is now working on her forthcoming third book with long-time collaborator, Robert Macfarlane: The Book of Birds.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more