Puck of Pook's Hill

Puck of Pook's Hill is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling,[1] published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history.

(Puck, who refers to himself as "the oldest Old Thing in England", is better known as a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

The genres of particular stories range from authentic historical novella (A Centurion of the Thirtieth, On the Great Wall) to children's fantasy (Dymchurch Flit).

Donald Mackenzie, who wrote the introduction for the Oxford World's Classics edition[2] of Puck of Pook's Hill in 1987, has described this book as an example of archaeological imagination that, in fragments, delivers a look at the history of England, climaxing with the signing of Magna Carta.

The story of a daring voyage to Africa made by Danes after they captured Sir Richard and his Saxon friend Hugh at sea.

A story that introduces a new narrator, a Roman soldier named Parnesius, born and stationed in Britain in the 4th century.

A tale of deception told by Sir Harry "Hal" Dawe, involving the explorer Sebastian Cabot and the privateer Andrew Barton near the end of the 15th century.

[3] The mention of "King George" places the supposed date of the poem between the years 1714 and 1830, and perhaps more specifically during the Napoleonic Continental System of 1806–1814.

A story of money and intrigue, told by a Jewish moneylender named Kadmiel, leading up to the signing of Magna Carta in 1215.