How to use this Page

    Joan Aiken, best known for writing her classic, almost Dickensian novel, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, has always seemed ultimately English, despite the fact that she had been born to an American father, the Pulitzer prize winning poet Conrad Aiken, and a Canadian mother. The family, with her older brother and sister, who […]

  Here is the first opportunity to see Russ Tunney’s brilliant adaptation of  Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase live on stage since it was published as a Nick Hern playscript earlier this year. Originally performed by a cast of five unbelievably quick change artists for a very successful tour around Southern England by […]

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a modern classic which for fifty years has thrilled and delighted readers all over the world, but the book itself has a story almost as astonishing as the adventures of its two desperate orphan heroines – this was a book that nearly didn’t get written! It all began one […]

It is great news that “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” which is currently celebrating its 50th birthday with three new editions and a new audio read by Joan’s daughter Lizza, has been chosen for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge – the theme is “Creepy Houses” and the great house of Willoughby Chase is certainly a […]

The delightful Charles Schlessiger of Brandt & Hochman, who is celebrating his 8Oth Birthday on July 25th (hopefully not at the office!) has been Joan Aiken’s agent for 50 years. But as Lewis Nichols noted in the New York Times in 1963, in an article accompanied by this comic cartoon – she was not the […]

#57 The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken (1962)
37 points

Long before there was Lemony Snicket! - Amy Sears

I left this off my last list and have been kicking myself ever since. This was one of my favorite books as a child. Miss Slighcarp gave me the shivers! You just knew she was plotting something horrible as Bonnie’s cheerful parents left the children in her custody, and sure enough, she was. The wolves in the snow only add to the terror, and then we reach the workhouse where Bonnie and Sylvia manage to survive and deal with bullies, but only just. Simon the gooseboy with his little donkey makes a terrific ally, until at last the dastardly governess gets her comeuppance. What could be better than a fast-paced Dickensian adventure? – Kate Coombs

As a child I avoided The Wolves of Willoughby Chase for precisely the wrong reasons.  Laughable reasons even.  When I was young, girls were constantly falling for animal books.  Cutesy dolphins.  Adorable horses.  And sweet little wolves.  Me?  I avoided such books like the plague.  Ridiculously so, to the point where I looked at the image of the slathering Edward Gorey hellhounds on the cover of this book and honestly thought to myself “wolves = girly = bad.”  I never said I was a bright child.  Clearly I would have adored this book back in the day.  One can only hope that there are brighter boys and girls out there willing to give a dark little title like this one a fair shake.

The plot according to AllReaders.com reads, “Soon after orphan Sylvia comes to live with her wealthy relatives, her aunt and uncle leave on an extended trip, leaving Sylvia and her spirited cousin Bonnie in the care of their governess, Miss Slighcarp. Bonnie’s parents are reported dead in a shipwreck, and Miss Slighcarp turns on her young charges, firing the household staff and sending the cousins away to an orphanage. Together, Bonnie and Sylvia must escape and try to reclaim their home.”

In a profile of Ms. Aiken from a November 1989 edition of Language Arts, it says that “Working at Argosy magazine for six years to support her family, Aiken learned the practicalities of professional writing. She then moved to the J. Walter Thompson London office and was a copywriter for a year when success with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase finally encouraged her to try full-time writing and she succeeded in making the transition.”

In the publication British Children’s Authors, Joan Aiken goes into a little more detail.  “The first two chapters of Willoughby Chase were written when both my children were tiny, and then the book had to be put aside for almost ten years. By this time the children were much bigger, and I read the chapters aloud to them as I wrote. They made a lot of very useful comments and criticisms as we went along.”

She also makes no bones about her primary influence.  “I think I got the idea for writing melodrama for boys and girls because when I was young, I had a great deal of Dickens read aloud to me. Of course, he is the prime example of this kind of melodrama. I think this had a very strong influence on my writing. The historical period of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the others is imaginary, although the trappings are all fairly genuine English nineteenth-century ones. This again, I think, was heavily influenced by Dickens. . . . The names of my characters have a strong connection with Dickens. Miss Slighcarp and Mr. Gripe, for example–this is the kind of name Dickens uses a great deal. A lot of my names, in fact,