Three children's novels

In his day, Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892) was a well-known figure in American arts and letters, with close ties to the New England Transcendentalists. Though Cranch made his mark in fields ranging from poetry and journalism to caricature and oil painting, his most enduring achievements are his novels for children. Collected here for the first time in one volume, these three works - The Last of the Huggermuggers, Kobboltozo: A Sequel to the Last of the Huggermuggers, and The Legend of Dr. Theophilus; or, The Enchanted Clothes - establish Cranch as a pioneer in American fantasy fiction. Until now, these texts have been largely inaccessible. Huggermuggers (1866) and Kobboltozo (1867) went through several printings during the last half of the nineteenth century but have not been reissued since 1901. The manuscript of Cranch's third and last novel, The Legend of Dr. Theophilus, disappeared around 1870 and did not resurface until the 1980s. It has never before been published.^ As the editors explain in their introduction, Cranch was the first American author to write novel-length works solely for children, and to fuse elements of fantasy and adventure. In an era when most juvenil