The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

For the time of year you can't do better than this stunning debut by Eowyn Ivey. The Snow Child is a beautifully written novel of longing and loss, and the battle of human beings to make their place at the edge of habitable nature.

In the wilds of Alaska Jack and Mabel build a snowman - a girl - on the night of the first snowfall. After this a little girl mysteriously enters their life. From the book I gather the Russian myth of the snow girl was collected by Arthur Ransome (of Swallows and Amazon's fame), and this myth has been skilfully interleaved with the narrative in Ivey's book.

The tale borders on the mythic and shifts between what is real and what is imaginary, and this is what gives it its uncanny power. The snow child herself is like nature, not easily tamed, and for most of the book we are not sure whether they are taming the girl or nature herself. For example Jack and Mabel's speech is in speech marks, but the snow girl's is not. This gives a sense in which we almost imagine we are hearing her voice, that it half-blends with the background. Masterful.

The book portrays the realities of survival, the killing of animals and the sheer hard work with an unflinching eye as Jack and Mabel eke out an existence where neighbours can mean the difference between survival and failure. I enjoyed Esther and George, the rumbustious neighbours, and the portrayal of Garrett, the boy who turns into a man before our eyes.

For me the star of the book is the landscape, reflected beautifully in the bare-boned prose.

Very highly recommended.

The Creation of a Master-piece - Guilds in England

From the 14th century right up until the 18th century in England, no master-craftsman could set up in a particular craft unless he became a member of its Guild.

So what were these Guilds that had such a stranglehold on craftsmanship and production?

The Guilds were controlled by a self-elected oligarchy, or confraternity of craftsmen, a system greased by bribery and favouritism.

Above, a bootmaker from Northampton shows his wares.

Guild Laws restricted a man to the manufacture of only one article, for example weavers were not allowed to dye their cloth, shoemakers were not permitted to mend shoes and bowyers could not make arrows for their bows, only the fletchers could do that. This was supposedly to protect each craftsman's job, but in practice led to much dispute and difficulty.

If you became a member of a Guild you would have to make your goods from specified materials, employ a specified number of apprentices, and sell at the Guild's fixed prices. If you failed to do this, or produced shoddy goods or work not approved by the Guild you would face penalties such as a fine, punishment in the pillory or imprisonment. Each Guild had a Court, and cases not satisfied in the Court would go before the Mayor who would arbitrate.

Only freemen of a particular town could join the Guild for their craft. Even if you had been a Guild member in another town, you still had to serve 5 years bound to a recognised master in the new town before you could prove yourself by making your "master-piece" and finally being admitted to join.

No one was allowed to sell their goods by candlelight, in case of passing off faulty workmanship under cover of darkness, and no work could be done after eight o'clock Saturday night until Monday morning, to respect the Sabbath.

Guilds were social as well as business institutions, and concerned themselves with the welfare of their workers and founded schools and alms-houses, even occasionally in some crafts supplying dowries for poorer women workers. Each Guild had its own Chaplain to conduct the services, and its own patron saint - St Anthony for grocers, St Patrick for saddlers, St Clement for tanners, St Stephen for weavers, and so forth.

Crafts were highly specialised, there were Guilds of longbow-string makers, salters, horners, patten makers, quilters and pin makers. Above you can see the Guild of Painters, of 1695. As you can see they are all dressed alike. Each Guild had its own costume, with variations for the different ranks. Apprentices wore blue cloaks in the winter and blue gowns in the summer. Nobody was allowed to wear cloaks below calf-length until they reached old age.

Many of England's finest buildings are the Guild Halls quite a few of which survive. The one pictured is Leicester's Guild Hall, a fine Elizabethan example.

"a haberdasher and a carpenter,

A webber, dyer and a papicer

Were with us eke, clothed in a livery

Of a solemn and great fraternity.

Full fresh and new their gear apyked was,

Their knives were ychaped not with brass,

but all with silver wrought full clean and weel.Their girdles and their puches every deal.

Well seemed each of them a fair burgess

To sitten in a Guild Hall on a dais"

Chaucer

A gentle undemanding stroll through an English Village

This small undemanding guide to the English Village would make an ideal gift for a townie or visitor to England just before they drive off into our rural byways. Divided neatly into 10 chapters, each section conveys a sense of the traditions and formation of the features of a typical english village. The Village green, the pub, the church and the big house are all here. I particularly enjoyed the section on the big house - the legacy of manor houses has been frequently undervalued and Wainwright makes us understand what they contributed and underlines the appeal of such series as Downton Abbey or Cranford.
Simplistic black and white woodcuts serve as illustrations - colour pictures would have helped bring the text to life (my only quibble). As will be apparent from its size, this is more of a general guide than an in-depth examination, but it packs a lot of information into a small space.
And talking of houses - I highly recommend Simon Jenkins paperback book England's Thousand Best Houses, a brick-shaped county by county guide to the big houses referred to in Wainwright's book. Jenkins is chairman of the National Trust and gives succint descriptions of each house's history, quirks and claim to fame.
Each house warrants at the most a couple of pages in this paperback, but again it is surprising just how much information can be compressed into such a small space. For historical fiction writers, this is your best guide to where to see period houses. All the houses in the book are open to the public and helpfully graded with stars to denote their importance. Oddly enough, I have often found the houses rated 1 star such as Lancaster's Cottage Museum to be more interesting than those rated with 5 stars, an accolade reserved for edifices such as Windsor Castle.