The Fearless Treasure

by Noel Streatfeild

Subtitled A Story of England from Then to Now, this is a social history of England told through vividly imagined scenes set in several periods within a contemporary frame. The book follows six children from different backgrounds and different parts of England who are taken on a journey in which they experience the past and learn the history of their own families and the parts they played in shaping the nation.

Genres: Fantasy, Juvenile, Childrens

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1953

About the author

Mary Noel Streatfeild, known as Noel Streatfeild, was an author best known and loved for her children's books, including Ballet Shoes and Circus Shoes. She also wrote romances under the pseudonym Susan Scarlett .

She was born on Christmas Eve, 1895, the daughter of William Champion Streatfeild and Janet Venn and the second of six children to be born to the couple. Sister Ruth was the oldest, after Noel came Barbara, William ('Bill'), Joyce (who died of TB prior to her second birthday) and Richenda. Ruth and Noel attended Hastings and St. Leonard's Ladies' College in 1910. As an adult, she began theater work, and spent approximately 10 years in the theater.

During the Great War, in 1915 Noel worked first as a volunteer in a soldier's hospital kitchen near Eastbourne Vicarage and later produced two plays with her sister Ruth. When things took a turn for the worse on the Front in 1916 she moved to London and obtained a job making munitions in Woolwich Arsenal. At the end of the war in January 1919, Noel enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Art (later Royal Academy) in London.

In 1930, she began writing her first adult novel, The Whicharts, published in 1931. In June 1932, she was elected to membership of PEN. Early in 1936, Mabel Carey, children's editor of J. M. Dent and Sons, asks Noel to write a children's story about the theatre, which led to Noel completing Ballet Shoes in mid-1936. In 28 September 1936, when Ballet Shoes was published, it became an immediate best seller.

According to Angela Bull, Ballet Shoes was a reworked version of The Whicharts. Elder sister Ruth Gervis illustrated the book, which was published on the 28th September, 1936. At the time, the plot and general 'attitude' of the book was highly original, and destined to provide an outline for countless other ballet books down the years until this day. The first known book to be set at a stage school, the first ballet story to be set in London, the first to feature upper middle class society, the first to show the limits of amateurism and possibly the first to show children as self-reliant, able to survive without running to grownups when things went wrong.

In 1937, Noel traveled with Bertram Mills Circus to research The Circus is Coming (also known as Circus Shoes). She won the Carnegie gold medal in February 1939 for this book. In 1940, World War II began, and Noel began war-related work from 1940-1945. During this time, she wrote four adult novels, five children's books, nine romances, and innumerable articles and short stories. On May 10th, 1941, her flat was destroyed by a bomb. Shortly after WWII is over, in 1947, Noel traveled to America to research film studios for her book The Painted Garden. In 1949, she began delivering lectures on children's books. Between 1949 and 1953, her plays, The Bell Family radio serials played on the Children's Hour and were frequently voted top play of the year.

Early in 1960s, she decided to stop writing adult novels, but did write some autobiographical novels, such as A Vicarage Family in 1963. She also had written 12 romance novels under the pen name "Susan Scarlett." Her children's books number at least 58 titles. From July to December 1979, she suffered a series of small strokes and moved into a nursing home. In 1983, she received the honor Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). On 11 September 1986, she passed away in a nursing home.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still have the copy of this book I was given as a child...loved it then...love it now

[Martyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apart from the usual awkwardly constructed sentences this isn't the typical Streatfeild novel. It was okay, but it did feel rather long, and the ending of it irritated me more than it should - it felt very Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-ish (though of course this book came first). But it was an interesting kind of concept. I don't know if she was commissioned to write it or whether it was her own idea, but it felt rather like the inspiration behind it could have come from the Powell and Pressburger film, A Canterbury Tale - that's very much what it made me think of at first, that feeling of lying on a hillside listening to the sounds of bygone centuries. It's not a Streatfeild book I would be in any hurry to re-read.

[Bryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was... well, as history it was pretty terrible, because it is being written from a point of view I just can't share, one that is somewhat dubious about the post-war British socialist plan and believes an awful lot that poverty happens to Bad People and such. Plus there is that belief in magical herdity which I used to take for granted (the idea of 'royal blood' or 'viking blood' or whatever) but now that I have seen what nonsense it is, I can't *unsee* it. A history book in which things like 'being good craftsmen' is a hereditary trait that lasts for centuries is not very useful as history.

I did enjoy it a tiny bit, though, both because it had a lot of descriptions of how people lived, and also because it is Streatfeild and I read a lot of her books (the Shoes ones) very young, so her way of writing is very comfortable, and this was Streatfeild I hadn't ever read before. So that was something. I think I ought to try rereading the various shoes books & seeing what I think now that I actually understand post-war Britain as a setting. The first time around I had no idea why things were bombed, I just wanted to read about people acting Shakespeare.

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six British schoolchildren — 3 boys and 3 girls — between the ages of 11 and 13, are chosen to take a fantastic journey during their summer vacation. Along the way they somehow actually experience the history of England, from just before the arrival of the Romans to the time of Jane Austen. During their travels they learn a little about where their own families fit into the tapestry of English history.

This book reads almost like a school reader, but is written in a way that should make the reader want to know what happens next.