In contrast to Dick Butterfield is Maisie and Jem’s father Thomas Kellaway, an assiduous chairmaker whose only wish is for his family to be happy. Maggie’s father is an opportunist if not quite a conman, and Maggie, for all her bravado, seems desperate for real friendship and compassion. The Kellaways are naive to the ways of the big city but soon meet the vibrant yet cynical Maggie Butterfield, who knows her way around London and befriends the newcomers. The novel centers around siblings Maisie and Jem Kellaway, who have just arrived in London with their parents from the small Dorset town of Piddletrenthide (one of the cutest names ever, and home today to a booming population of 647 individuals!). In Burning Bright, Chevalier borrows heavily from that collection’s themes and even borrows the author to be a character in her story. “The Tyger” is probably the most famous poem in Blake’s classic poetry collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, first printed by Blake himself in 1789. Poetry lovers, or really anyone who has taken an introduction to English literature class, will recognize the title of this Tracy Chevalier novel as a line from the William Blake poem “The Tyger”:
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