Daddy-Long-Legs
- Recommended for 10 years or older
- Printed in United Kingdom
by Jean Webster; introduction by Eva Ibbotson
A trustee of the John Grier orphanage has offered to send Judy Abbott to college. The only requirements are that she must write to him every month and that she can never know who he is. Judy's life at college is a whirlwind of friends, classes, parties and a growing friendship with the handsome Jervis Pendleton. With so much happening in her life, Judy can scarcely stop writing to 'Daddy-Long-Legs', or wondering who her mysterious benefactor is...
Recommended for young readers ages 10 years and up.
Softcover, 192 pages.
Puffin Classics.
Printed in Great Britain.
About the Authors:
Jean Webster (1875–1916) was born in Fredonia, New York, the daughter of Charles L. Webster, who was Mark Twain's publisher and business partner. Educated at Vassar College, she must have been a woman with a strong social conscience, perhaps aroused by her visits as a student to orphanages and other institutions (part of her economics course: her degree was in English and economics). She was always concerned for the plight of children who began life with such disadvantages and later she served on committees for prison reform and regularly visited Sing Sing prison. She wrote a number of novels that are now forgotten, but the last two, Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) and its sequel Dear Enemy (1915), have survived in book form, stage and film versions, and a British musical comedy Love from Judy produced in 1953.
Eva Ibbotson, born Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner (1925–2010), was an Austrian-born British novelist, known for her children's books. Some of her novels for adults have been successfully reissued for the young adult market in recent years. For the historical novel Journey to the River Sea (Macmillan, 2001), she won the Smarties Prize in category 9–11 years, garnered unusual commendation as runner-up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and made the Carnegie Medal, Whitbread Award, and Blue Peter Book Award shortlists. She was a finalist for the 2010 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize at the time of her death. Her last book, The Abominables, was one of eight books on the longlist for the same award in 2012.