Mary Valentine Williams

What Happened To Selina Smith (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

SYNOPSIS: What Happened To Selina Smith by Valentine Williams. A novella for young readers 12 + Based on real events in Market Drayton and surroundings in the 1880s. SELINA SMITH, 13, oldest of four children, leaves school at 13 and attends the May Hiring Fair where she is taken on by MRS RODWAY, the rector's wife, as a laundress, sharing a room with MOLLY. Her mother is ill and her father, a canal worker, cannot earn enough to keep the family. When MRS SMITH dies and the younger children are sent to a relative, SELINA is distraught. Visiting the town is WOMBWELL and BOSTOCK'S TRAVELLING MENAGERIE and to take her mind off her grief, SELINA pays them a visit, where she is comforted by MARCUS ORENZO, the African lion tamer, and BETTY, otherwise known as SERPENTINA, the python handler. Orenzo escorts her home after supper, but she is seen by the housekeeper, MRS BARTON, who does not approve. Arguments follow and the Rodway's son DAVID, causes trouble for her. SELINA realises she can use her laundering and sewing skills in the Menagerie, and she has talent as a contortionist, both of which enable her to be taken on by BOSTOCK, the owner. She develops an act where she gets into a small suitcase and is released by BETTY before handling the pythons. Other exhibitors at the Menagerie are MAJOR MITE TINY, CAPTAIN MURPHY, the giant, SHE, the Australian lion tamer, PROFESSOR LAWRAINE the reptile handler, and RAMASWAMY, the wild man. The python, JEZABEL, eats ALICE the bird woman's, dog, and DAVID, humiliated by ORENZO, tries to set fire to ORENZO'S wagon. Luckily he fails. SELINA is regarded as bringing bad luck to the Menagerie. Travelling to Birmingham with the Menagerie, one of the lions excapes as they are setting up and ORENZO follows it into an open sewer, where, with SELINA'S help, it is enticed back to its cage, but not before it has mauled ORENZO. WALLACE, the oldest lion, dies. The Rodway's son, DAVID, puts in another appearance and there is almost a fight between ORENZO and DAVID. SELINA dares DAVID to enter the lion's cage. There are several incidents where brave young Selina is able to assist her friends when danger threatens, once when the elephant undoes the catch to the lions' cage. She is rewarded by the mayor and BOSWELL for her bravery and is able to go back to see her siblings and pay for their future care. She is reunited with MOLLY. Her father is shamed into being more sober and is reconciled with his daughter. ORENZO has earned enough money to go home, while BETTY decides to retire and the Menagerie is sold off. SELINA finds work in the London theatres as a wardrobe mistress.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Mary Valentine Williams
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. August 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780463555156
• Artikelnr.: 54287034

Autorenporträt

Mary V Williams was born in a Hampshire village and spent most of her early childhood playing outside with mud, sticks and a dog, before being captured and made to go to school where she discovered books, poetry and art, which was a small consolation.
With an artistic, loving, but deaf mother, and a father who was an eccentric engineer and inventor, life was never dull. After school she devoured poetry and novels and began writing her own.

A nice safe job in a bank was proposed when she left school. Hating it, she found herself work with a charity caring for Polish and Tibetan refugees instead. Later, she studied at Manresa College in Roehampton, accompanied, she feels, by the ghost of Gerard Manley Hopkins who had been a Jesuit novitiate there, and met her husband, Peter. Together they made the most of Sixties London and traveled around Europe and North Africa before getting married and settling in Stoke Newington, a melting pot of radical political activity in those days. Mary continued to write poetry and teach but missed green spaces and the outdoor life.

After the birth of their two sons they decided reluctantly to seek quieter surroundings outside London and when Peter was offered a job in Lancashire the family moved Up North. Once the culture shock had worn off, the friendliness, scenery and the prospect of a larger house, made this a good move, despite the precipitation. She loved the humour and down to earth attitude of the people. She kept on writing and teaching.

As a family, they swapped houses with a Danish family, traveled by coach to Moscow and Estonia, camped on the Belgium coast, shared a house in Holland and had annual camping holidays with other families. The addition of another son soon after moving north and then a foster son three years later entailed a lot of cooking and mucking out of rooms. Odd socks and raids on the fridge were repeating motifs. Mary felt she needed a different career, and psychotherapy training and an MA in English led to a commission to write self-help books. Later she worked in child mental health, and for the NSPCC, until the war between Psychiatry and Psychology got in the way, then for seven happy years was a staff counsellor in a University.

Left with a huge, empty house once the children had left home, they sold up and moved south to Shropshire, where Peter had embarked on a career as an art therapist. Mary now had time and space to write. A series of books...