The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt is a long novel, the kind that stays with you as a beautiful friend and when you get to the end you regret it concluding. It is the story of four families: the Cains, Wellwoods, the Fludds and Warrens. It takes place before the turn of the 19th century and goes on to the end of World War I (from 1895 to 1918). Olive Wellwood is central; she has come from a poor family into a marriage with a banker who was a member of the Fabian Society, Humphry Wellwood. She has written many tales for children and adults, often filled with fairy lore. Each of her five children has his or her own story, which she keeps on developing as they grow older-their response to this is varied. The Wellwoods' home becomes a place that artists, socialists, anarchists, Quakers, Fabians, writers and free thinkers frequent.
The Cains had two children. The mother who was Italian, died when they lived in Florence (the name of their daughter). Julian is the first character we meet, at the South Kensington museum where his father, Prosper Cain is special keeper of precious metals. He and Tom Wellwood discover a boy, a working-class runaway, Philip Warren, drawing the famous Gloucester Candlestick with its dragons and helmeted gnome-men in the basement and a long friendship began. They take him to Kent where he becomes part of the big Wellwood family. With them lives Violet Grimwith, Olive's sister, who makes the place run while Olive is writing her moneymaking fairytales. After Tom comes Dorothy, then Hedda, Florian and Robin. Basil Wellwood, Humphry's brother, also at the bank has a German wife, Katharina, a son Charles and daughter Griselda.
