A stunning new edition with deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. A masterpiece of nostalgia, Charles Kingsley's Victorian classic tells of Tom, a young chimney sweep who falls into a river and, becoming a water-baby, is guided back to humanity through a series of adventures, each with a moral lesson. Part of the fascination with the book today is the reflection of Victorian-era debates about poverty, working children and the eternal conflict between nature vs nurture. The FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library.

It's adventure time!! For well over a century now, children's classics have brought joy, laughter and stimulated adventures in young readers and brought some fairy tales into life, now its your turn to join in the fun!

Join your favourite characters of all time in this 10 Book Collection.
Titles included are:
Heidi
Alice's adventure in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass
The Water babies
Kidnapped
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Black Beauty
The Secret Garden
The Jungle Book
Treasure Island

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby. A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story was written.' Poor Tom is an orphan, employed by the underhand Grimes as a chimney sweep. While cleaning a chimney one day, Tom becomes lost and appears in Ellie's bedroom. She mistakes him for a thief and he flees in fright, down to the edge of a stream where he falls asleep. In his dreamlike world, he becomes a water baby, swimming with the other water babies and discovering an aquatic playground full of strange and wonderful characters.

'this is all a fairy tale...and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true' The Water-Babies (1863) is one of the strangest and most powerful children's stories ever written. In describing the underwater adventures of Tom, a chimney-sweeper's boy who is transformed into a water-baby after he drowns, Charles Kingsley combined comic fantasy and moral fable to extraordinary effect. Tom's encounters with friendly fish, curious lobsters, and characters such as Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby are both an exciting fairy tale and a crash course in evolutionary theory. They also reflect the quirky imagination of one of the great Victorian eccentrics. Tom's adventures are constantly interrupted by Kingsley's sideswipes at contemporary issues such as child labour and the British education system, and they offer a rich satiric take on the great scientific debates of the day. This edition reprints the original complete version of the story, and includes a lively introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and an appendix that reprints Kingsley's first attempt to describe the mysterious creatures that live under the sea.

The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862-1863 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. The book was extremely popular during its day, and was a mainstay of children's literature through the 1920s.

After being chased from the home of an upper-class young girl called Ellie, chimney-sweep Tom falls asleep and tumbles into a river. There he is transformed into a 'water-baby' and his adventures truly begin. Beneath the surface, he enters a magical world full of strange and wonderful creatures, where he must prove his moral worth in order to earn what he truly desires. One of the most unusual children's books ever written, The Water-Babies, subtitled 'A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby', was originally intended as a satire in support of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and explores many of the issues at the forefront of biologists' minds at the time. First published as a complete novel in 1863, Charles Kingsley's classic tale also explores ideas about religion, the Victorian education system and the working conditions of children and the poor. With glorious black and white illustrations by W. Heath Robinson and an introduction by author and journalist Christina Hardyment. Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

The classic story of a chimney-boy's discoveries in a magical underwater world. Tom, an ill-treated chimney-boy, jumps into a cool stream to clean the soot off himself - and becomes a water baby, cleaner and happier than he has ever been, in a fairy world under river and sea. Meeting beautiful and frightening creatures, getting into all sorts of mishaps, and learning some lessons along the way, Tom travels to the Other-end-of-Nowhere on an unforgettable voyage of discovery. This story has been specially abridged for Puffin Classics