Puck of Pook’s Hill

by Rudyard Kipling

Release: February 1906 to October 1906
Format: Short Story
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Children
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Puck is an elf who magicks people from the past to tell their stories to two children in England.

These first ten Puck stories were published in British version of The Strand Magazine from January through October of this year. In the states, the first four stories appeared simultaneously in The Ladies’ Home Journal. All ten stories along with sixteen poems were published together in the 1906 collection, Puck of Pook’s Hill.

“Weland’s Sword” The Strand, Jan 1906
“Young Men at the Manor” The Strand, Feb 1906
“The Knights of the Joyous Venture” The Strand, Mar 1906
“Old Men at Pevensey” The Strand, Apr 1906
“A Centurion of the Thirtieth” The Strand, May 1906
“On the Great Wall” The Strand, Jun 1906
“The Winged Hats” The Strand, Jul 1906
“Hal o’ the Draft” The Strand, Aug 1906
“Dimchurch Flit” The Strand, Sep 1906
“The Treasure and the Law” The Strand, Oct 1906

Some of these stories were told by Puck himself rather than by historical figures. Puck told me that the first time-traveling storyteller was Sir Richard Dalyngridge in the second Puck story in the February Strand.

— Michael Main

‘But you said that all the fair—People of the Hills had left England.’

‘So they have; but I told you that you should come and go and look and know, didn’t I? The knight isn’t a fairy. He’s Sir Richard Dalyngridge, a very old friend of mine. He came over with William the Conqueror, and he wants to see you particularly.’

DEBUT

“Puck of Pook’s Hill,” in The Strand Magazine, February 1906 to October 1906.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Groupings

The Strand Magazine (periodical)

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.