Tom's Midnight Garden
Classic Einzig cover thought to be first edition
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| Author | Philippa Pearce |
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| Illustrator | Susan Einzig |
| Cover artist | Einzig |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's fantasy, adventure novel |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
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Publication date
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31 December 1958 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 229 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 13537516 |
| LC Class | PZ7.P3145 To2 |
Tom's Midnight Garden is a low fantasy novel for children by Philippa Pearce, first published in 1958 by Oxford with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, television, the cinema, and the stage. The main character Tom is a modern boy living under quarantine with his aunt and uncle in a city flat, part of a converted building that was a country house during the 1880s–1890s. At night he slips back in time to the old garden where he finds a girl playmate.
Pearce won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. For the 70th anniversary celebration in 2007, a panel named it one of the top ten Medal-winning works and the British public elected it the nation's second-favourite.
When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles, Tom is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen. They live in an upstairs flat of a big house with no garden, only a tiny yard for parking. The elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, lives above them. Because Tom may be infectious, he is not allowed out to play, and he feels lonely. Without exercise he lies awake after midnight, restless, when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13. He gets up to investigate and discovers that the back door now opens on a large sunlit garden.
Every night the clock strikes 13 and Tom returns to the Victorian era grounds. There he meets another lonely child, a girl called Hatty, and they become inseparable playmates. Tom sees the family occasionally, but only Hatty (and as is revealed later in the book, the gardener) sees him and the others believe she plays alone.
Tom writes daily accounts to his brother Peter, who follows the adventures during his recovery – and afterward, for Tom contrives to extend the stay with Aunt and Uncle. Gradually at first, Hatty grows up and passes Tom's age; he comes to realise that he is slipping to different points in the past. Finally she grows up at a faster rate, until she is an adult she is courting an acquaintance of hers, Barty. At this stage in the book, the season in the old garden tends to be winter.
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