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Hugh Lofting was born in Maidenhead in 1886. As a child he kept a miniature zoo and wildlife museum in his mother's linen cupboard and enjoyed making up stories for his family. He later studied engineering in London and the United States, and visited Canada, Africa and the West Indies. After his marriage in 1912 he settled in the United States. Hugh Lofting fought in the trenches during World War I and it was whilst observing the lack of compassion shown to the horses on the battlefields that the idea for Doctor Dolittle was born. He was the main character in letters Hugh sent home from the front to entertain his children. The successful publication of The Story of Doctor Dolittle in 1920 was followed by a further eleven books. In 1923 Hugh Lofting was awarded the Newbery Medal. He died in 1947.
The articles Mitchell wrote for The New Yorker in the 1940s and 1950s established him as the finest staff writer in the history of the magazine and one of the greatest journalists America has produced. The six stories in this collection, all concerned with the lives of the people who worked and lived on the New York waterfront, break all the accepted rules of how journalists should write. The impeccable sentences unwind themselves at a leisurely pace and the significance of the story Mitchell wants to tell is couched in subtle symbolism. The best story in this book, Mr Hunter's Grave , needs only the slightest tweak and bluff to turn it into a short story of the highest order. Mitchell shines a torchlight into places we rarely dare to look-the bottom of the harbour; the darkest recesses of the soul. (Kirkus UK)
