I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle
First British edition, William Heinemann, 1949
AuthorDodie Smith
IllustratorRuth Steed, from sketches by the author
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
Set inSuffolk and London, 1930s
PublisherWilliam Heinemann (UK); McClelland and Stewart (CA); Little, Brown (US)
Publication date
1948
Publication placeUnited Kingdom, United States, Canada
Media typePrint: hardback
OCLC24724940
823.914

I Capture the Castle was Dodie Smith's first novel, written during the Second World War when she and her husband Alec Beesley, a conscientious objector, moved from their native England to California. Smith was already an established playwright and later became famous for writing the children's classic The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

The novel concerns an eccentric family struggling to live in genteel poverty in a decaying castle during the 1930s. The first-person narrator is Cassandra Mortmain, who tells the story through her journal. It is a coming-of-age story in which Cassandra becomes a young woman and experiences her first love.

In 2003 the novel was listed at number 82 in the BBC's survey The Big Read.[1]

  1. ^ "The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, retrieved 26 October 2012