Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood

Gwen Raverat, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, described Period Piece, her classic memoir of an English childhood in the late 19th century, as a drawing of the world when I was young. The observations of the small incidents in her life, recorded here both in pen portraits and line drawings, reveal an artist’s careful eye.

Vividly evoking a bygone era, it is a shrewd, touching and comic portrait of her childhood, her eccentric relations and of Cambridge society and university. Since she was renowned as a book illustrator, it is not surprising that her line drawings for Period Piece are a masterpiece of controlled wit and charm all on their own.