Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 22nd October 2014
Paperback
Published: 15th June 2009
Hardback
Published: 2nd May 2019
Tarka the Otter
By (Author) Henry Williamson
Illustrated by Annabel Large
Penguin Random House Children's UK
Puffin
2nd May 2019
2nd May 2019
United Kingdom
Children
Fiction
823.912
Hardback
288
Width 137mm, Height 185mm, Spine 22mm
280g
A beautiful gift edition of one of the most famous animal stories in children's literature. The classic story of an otter living in the Devonshire countryside which captures the feel of life in the wild as seen through the otter's own eyes. Tarka is born in Owlery Holt, near Canal Bridge on the River Torridge, where he grows up with his mother and sisters, learning to swim and catch fish, and to beware the hunters' cry. His life is one of adventure and play, but soon he must fend for himself, travelling along streams and rivers to the open sea, sometimes with female otters White-tip and Greymuzzle. Always on the run, Tarka has many close shaves until he finally meets his nemesis, the fearsome hound Deadlock.
Henry William Williamson was born in 1895 in Brockley, south-east London. The then semi-rural location provided easy access to the countryside, and he developed a deep love of nature throughout his childhood. He became a prolific author known for his natural and social history novels. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literatrure in 1928 for Tarka the Otter.