Have just re-read this, maybe for the first time since childhood (about 10?) It is much stranger than I remembered, and the second part, where Tom wanders about having impromptu and rather dull adventures/conversations, is not as good as the first. I can see that Kingsley genuinely wanted to improve the lot of chimney sweep children, and was trying to marry Darwin's theory of evolution with Christian ethics (evolution = moral improvement), but he is so bossy and hectoring and full of himself. Also quite cruel in some scenes, despite advocating kindness, and as for the racism.... !
This edition has Edward Linley Sambourne's rather scary and vivid illustrations from 1885 (not credited however).

hardback

Short and interesting as a fairy tale but there is a lot to cringe about when the narrator talks about Irish and Scottish folks. There are also a lot of words, places, etc, that are either completely made up or beyond my knowledge. You are assumed to be English when reading this book and apparently a child too. Therefore, it's more a thing to study as to the time of Charles Kingsley than to read for pleasure. I can't imagine me understanding a thing when I was a child.

"The most wonderful and the strongest of things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.'

First published in 1862 Reverend Charles Kingsley’s classic novel about a young chimney sweep who after falling into a river finds himself transformed in to an aquatic creature, a 'Water Baby'. The tale begins relatively realistically, and when Tom plunges into the water in becomes a mix of social and scientific satire.

This story is far more than a simple fairy tale, in parts it's a political tract. Kingsley was appalled by the plight of the young sweeps, condemned by their brutal masters to a life of misery and, often, early deaths, if not from falls then from lung disease or cancer. This book so horrified its readers, young and old alike, that it was instrumental in a new law reforming the working conditions of countless young boys forced to crawl up inside chimneys in order to clean them.

Initially written for Kingsley’s four-year-old son and published just three years after Darwin's ' On the Origin the Species', which shook Victorian Christian beliefs. Like Darwin, Kingsley took a keen interest in nature and science, some would even argue that this novel mirrors Darwin's theories on evolution, only in this case in the afterlife. Tom evolves due to education by his elders and experience. However, this is also a Christian parable that warns against the dangers of not being baptised in the Christian faith and the merits of treating others as you would want to be treated and the notion of eye for an eye.

This book is undoubtedly an important piece of social history but it's also an uncomfortable read. It's littered with archaic phrases and bloated sentences but most worryingly of all is the almost nonchalant use of sexist and racist (especially against the Irish) undertones throughout that simply would not be acceptable today. I personally would never recommend it being read to youngsters, hence the lowly mark. ( )