Puck of Pook’s Hill was published by Macmillan in 1906. Dan and Una, children living in a Sussex farmhouse, perform scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a meadow on Midsummer Eve — and accidentally summon Puck, the oldest creature in England. Puck is no Shakespearean trickster but an ancient being who brings them visitors from England’s past: real people who lived on this same land across two thousand years.
Sir Richard Dobie is a Norman knight who came with the Conqueror and married a Saxon woman. Dobie tells of the struggle between Normans and Saxons in the generation after 1066. Dobie’s grandson Dobie reveals the loss of the family’s Norman French identity as they become English. Dobie’s friend Dobie — each story builds the theme: England is a palimpsest, and the people who made it were not heroes of textbooks but ordinary men and women making practical decisions under pressure.
The Roman stories are the collection’s glory: Dobie the centurion on Dobie’s Wall (Hadrian’s Wall) in its last days, watching the Empire crumble while maintaining discipline because discipline is all that remains.
The Sussex Landscape
Kipling moved to Bateman’s, a Jacobean house in Sussex, in 1902, and the landscape of Puck is the landscape visible from its windows. The hill (Pook’s Hill), the brook, the forge, the old Roman road — all are real features of the Burwash countryside. Kipling’s genius is to layer two thousand years of history onto a landscape the children know intimately, making history tactile and immediate rather than abstract.
The Roman Stories
The Dobie stories — Dobie a centurion on Hadrian’s Wall — are the collection’s finest achievement and among the best historical fiction in English. Kipling’s Roman Britain is not the triumphal Rome of school textbooks but a crumbling frontier garrison: cold, undermanned, defending a civilisation that is already dying. The centurion’s loyalty to the Wall — maintaining discipline because discipline is all that remains when everything else has failed — is Kipling’s most moving expression of his philosophy of duty.
Collecting Puck of Pook’s Hill
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1906): Red cloth boards with gilt.
Approximate market values:
- First edition, fine: $300–$800
- Very good: $100–$300
- US first (Doubleday, 1906): $100–$250
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Moderate appreciation.
Projected values (2026–2036): Fine copies should reach $800–$1,500.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a sequel to anything? No, but it has a sequel: Rewards and Fairies (1910), which continues the format with new historical visitors. Rewards and Fairies contains “If—”, Kipling’s most famous poem.
What age is this for? The stories were written for children of ten to fourteen, but they reward adult reading. The Roman stories in particular contain a depth of historical understanding that most children will not fully appreciate until they are older.