A Childhood. With wood engravings by Enid Marx.

Bookseller Notes

Her sole literary work, scarce. An autobiographical novel: the dustjacket considers inconclusively that the book is 'either biographical fiction or fictional biography', whilst Allinson's Foreword avers, 'Charlotte is more like myself than anyone else: yet if she strikes you as odd, have patience with her'; the chronology of the narrative is no easier to classify as the author acknowledges, 'the seasons of one year pass and at the same time Charlotte grows from about nine to fourteen' but more straightforward are the design elements supplied by Allinson's friend Enid Marx, in her only work for the Woolfs.Allinson shared with Marx an interest in folk-forms, particularly folk-song a musician and puppeteer, she was among the closest friends of the composer Michael Tippett. The printed dedication of this book is to her partner, the actress Judith Wogan (of the Arts League of Service). Tippett and Wogan were the recipients of notes left by Allinson before she drowned herself in 1945.