A Traveller in Time

First published in 1939Penelope Taberner Cameron is a solitary & a sickly child, a reader & a dreamer. Her mother, indeed, is of the opinion that the girl has grown all too attached to the products of her imagination & decides to send her away from London for a restorative dose of fresh country air. But staying at Thackers, in remote Derbyshire, Penelope is soon caught up in a new mystery, as she finds herself transported at unforeseeable intervals back & forth from modern to Elizabethan times. There she becomes part of a remarkable family that is, Penelope realizes, in terrible danger as they plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, from the prison in which Queen Elizabeth has confined her.Penelope knows the tragic end that awaits the Scottish queen, but she can neither change the course of events nor persuade her new family of the hopelessness of their cause, which love, loyalty, & justice all compel them to embrace. Caught between present & past, Penelope is ever more torn by questions of freedom & fate. To travel in time, she discovers, is to be very much alone. And yet the slow recurrent rhythms of the natural world, beautifully captured by Alison Uttley, also speak of a greater ongoing life that transcends the passage of the years.ALISON UTTLEY (1884–1976) was born Alice Jane Taylor in Derbyshire, England, into a tenant farming family that had lived on the same land for 200 years. Uttley would return to the Derbyshire landscape & the house she grew up in, Castle Top Farm, in many of her books, including A Traveller in Time. A bright scholarship student throughout her childhood, Uttley went on to Manchester University, & in 1906 became the second female student to graduate with honors in physics from the university. Marriage & motherhood put an end to her teaching career, & it was only after her son, John, began school that she published her first book, The Squirrel, the Hare &the Little Grey Rabbit The “superb” time travel adventure of one lonely young girl, a remarkable family, and an impossible task, set between modern and Elizabethan England ( The Washington Post ) "A beautiful book . . . a form of enchanting ghost story, with the ghosts drawn in with the grace of a painter on a fan." — The Observer Penelope Taberner Cameron is a solitary and a sickly child, a reader and a dreamer. Her mother, indeed, is of the opinion that the girl has grown all too attached to the products of her imagination and decides to send her away from London for a restorative dose of fresh country air. But staying at Thackers, in remote Derbyshire, Penelope is soon caught up in a new mystery, as she finds herself transported at unforeseeable intervals back and forth from modern to Elizabethan times. There she becomes part of a remarkable family that is, Penelope realizes, in terrible danger as they plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, from the prison in which Queen Elizabeth has confined her. Penelope knows the tragic end that awaits the Scottish queen, but she can neither change the course of events nor persuade her new family of the hopelessness of their cause, which love, loyalty, and justice all compel them to embrace. Caught between present and past, Penelope is ever more torn by questions of freedom and fate. To travel in time, she discovers, is to be very much alone. And yet the slow recurrent rhythms of the natural world, beautifully captured by Alison Uttley, also speak of a greater ongoing life that transcends the passage of the years. When, in the late 1930s, Penelope is sent to stay with relatives in a remote ancient farmhouse in Derbyshire, she finds herself mysteriously transported to Elizabethan times where her sixteenth-century family is scheming to free the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, but, even with her twentieth-century knowledge, Penelope remains helpless in the face of danger A wonderful history book about time travel between modern day England and the medieval period when a small girl finds herself privy to the goings on of the Babbington plot to rescue Mary Queen of Scots.