

So Cassandra instead strives to hone her writing skills in her journals. While her beautiful older sister, Rose, longs to live in a Jane Austen novel, Cassandra knows that meeting an eligible man to marry isn’t in either of their futures when their home is crumbling and they have to sell their furniture for food.


Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family may live in a ramshackle old English castle, but that’s about as romantic as her life gets. Given that most teenagers believe their parents to be mad – and vice versa – the novel also serves as a helpful guide to recognising the fine line between eccentricity and outright insanity.“Every time I meet someone who also loves I Capture the Castle, I know we must be kindred spirits.” -from the new foreword by Jenny Han, the New York Times bestselling author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.Ī beautiful, deluxe edition of Dodie Smith’s beloved novel, I Capture the Castle, featuring a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author Jenny Han, a stunning new cover, and designed endpapers that is perfect for devoted readers and those discovering this timeless story for the first time. ‘There are many good reasons to read Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle: it provides excellent advice about dressing on a budget (dye all your clothes sea-green) how to cope when the man you love falls for your elder sister (keep a diary) and your stepmother dances naked in the rain (ditto). However, their lives are thrown into confusion when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. In her journal, she records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her glamorous stepmother Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from writer’s block. ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink’ is the first line of I Capture the Castle, a timeless, witty and enchanting novel by Dodie Smith about growing up.Ĭassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian, impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere.
