The Children of the New Forest, by Captain Marryat.
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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.
Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.
"The Children of the New Forest" was published in 1847, the
twenty-fourth book to flow from Marryat's pen, and the last published
whilst he was still alive. It was written for children, and has been
phenomenally succesful: it is still in print over 150 years later.
This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.
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