Physical description

Hard cover book. Eggs & Baker or The Days of Trial
Author: John Masefield
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
Date: 1936
Further Information: Navy blue cloth with pictorial end papers hardcover with lettering and patterning to spine in black. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with the typed text PAT FIC MAS
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Public Library covered by a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

Eggs and Baker, or The Days of Trial (1936) is a novel by the English poet and Poet Laureate John Masefield, best known for verse ('Sea-Fever', The Everlasting Mercy) and children's classics like The Box of Delights and The Midnight Folk, published the previous year. The story is set inland in Masefield's imagined English county of Tatchester/Condicote his recurring fictional geography, also used in The Box of Delights. The plot centres on a long-running trial of two men one a 'half-wit' accused of shooting and killing a gamekeeper while poaching. The real protagonist, though, is a baker who is losing business and standing in the community because of his socialist sympathies, and who takes up the accused men's cause at real cost to himself. A contemporary Kirkus review called it 'a totally unexpected book from Masefield, and a disappointing one', and wondered whether it was intended as 'a spoof on the law, or a serious commentary on problems of justice'.