Showing results for title "The Water Babies", by author "Charles Kingsley" in Literature & Fiction

Julia McKenzie, Timothy West and Berlie Doherty star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Charles Kingsley's classic tale of a chimney sweep who becomes a water baby.

"The Water Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby" is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862-1863 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. The book was extremely popular in England during its day, and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades.

When Tom, an ill-treated little chimney-sweep, jumps into a clear, cool stream to clean himself something magical happens; he is turned into a tiny water baby by the fairies. He enters a strange, magical underwater world, and travels beyond the world's end to the other end-of-nowhere, getting into all sorts of scrapes and encountering creatures beautiful and frightening along the way. He also learns many important lessons - it is a voyage of discovery that Tom will never forget.

There are very few children's stories that have raised as much outrage in grown-up politics as The Water Babies did when it first appeared in 1863. It was written by Charles Kingsley for his own little boy and shortly after he had been made tutor to the Prince of Wales.