Penelope Lively has achieved popular success and high critical acclaim for her books for children written in the 1970s and for her later novels and short stories for adults. She is regarded today as one of Britain's most respected writers. She has written twenty children's books and thirteen books of fiction for adults, a remarkable achievement in just twenty-three years. Her work has received high praise for her wit, shrewd insight, and elegant style.

Central preoccupations in Lively's writing, whether for children or for adults, are the importance of place and a sense of continuity, both personal and collective, between past and present. In her June 1973 article for the Horn Book, "Children and Memory," she writes perceptively of her reasons for writing for children and the effect she hopes her books may have upon her readers: "It is the perception, often startling, that places have a past, that...