Posted by Peter Ceresole on October 12, 2007 at 10:12:27 from 80.176.146.133 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Third person posted by Elizabeth on October 12, 2007 at 00:38:34:
Can you imagine the books all through the eyes of Titty, and Dorothea as next most imaginative, when Titty isn't there?
It's not such a leap for anybody who has read Peter Duck and Missee Lee. That's what those books are supposed to be- although AR was determinedly third person there too and even supplied a background story in the other books.
There are also 'Titty' and 'Dot' personal narratives, for instance Titty with the Obeah woman in SD(?) and dowsing (PM), Dot and the tall Dutchman in WH.
Even so, those are all carefully told in the third person and it's pretty clear that AR deliberately didn't use the first person voice. I still maintain that that is because that's not what proper novelists did then- especially not in children's books. If I'm wrong about this, I'm sure somebody will tell us...