I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle

First British edition, William Heinemann, 1949
Author	Dodie Smith
Illustrator	Ruth Steed, from sketches by the author
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Set in	Suffolk and London, 1930s
Publisher	William Heinemann (UK); McClelland and Stewart (CA); Little, Brown (US)
Publication date	1948
Publication place	United Kingdom, United States, Canada
Media type	Print: hardback
OCLC	24724940
Dewey Decimal	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]