The Marvellous Land of Snergs : Two Runaway Children Among a Small Sturdy People

Two children run away from a home for unwanted infants and fall in with the Snergs — a small, sturdy, hospitable people — and with an ogre who has given up eating children, a witch, and Vanderdecken's ghostly crew. E. A. Wyke-Smith published it in 1927; Tolkien read it to his children and said it was an unconscious source for hobbits. The comedy is dry and the forest is genuinely dangerous. Ten paintings from Constable to Doré, spanning 1810 to 1895, bring the forest, fields and far roads of the Snergs' world into the book.