| Period Piece | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Gwen Raverat |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber |
| Publication date | 1952 |
| ISBN | 1-904555-12-8 |
Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood is an autobiographical work by Gwendoline Mary "Gwen" Raverat.
Gwen Raverat (née Darwin) (1885–1957) was the daughter of George Howard Darwin and was an artist. She married the French artist Jacques Raverat in 1911 and had daughters Elizabeth Hambro and Sophie Pryor. Her dryly amusing childhood memoir Period Piece, includes illustrations of, and anecdotes about, many of the Darwin–Wedgwood family.
As the author explains in the preface it is "a circular book" and although it begins with the meeting of her parents and ends with Gwen as a student at Slade it is not written chronologically, but rather arranged in a series of fifteen themed chapters, each dealing with a particular aspects of life such as "Education", "Sport", "Ghosts and Horrors". The book is illustrated throughout with line drawings by the author.[1]
It was originally published by Faber & Faber in 1952 in hardback (ISBN 1-904555-12-8) and as a paperback (ISBN 0-571-06742-5) in 1960.