Look Back with Love: A Manchester Childhood by Dodie Smith ~ 1974. This edition: Slightly Foxed, 2011. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-1-906562-30-4. 272 pages.
My rating: An easy 10/10. A pleasure first page to last.
This post should be extremely easy to write, as it is merely meant to be an enthusiastic recommendation of two things.
First and foremost, this stellar memoir by Dodie Smith (I capture the Castle, The Hundred and One Dalmations), detailing with immense good humour her childhood days in Manchester, when she lived with her widowed mother in a series of family homes.
Before reading this book I had come across several excellent and detailed reviews which inspired my search-and-purchase. I shall not attempt to add to their number, but instead will encourage you to follow these links to the several posts which led to this happy acquisition.
Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf – a wonderful review, with generous quotes from the text.
Simon’s Stuck-in-a-Book post is disarmingly chatty and wholly enthusiastic.
And from Elaine at Random Jottings, this excellent advice:
I beg you, please do get hold of a copy. If you are feeling miserable, it will cheer you up, if you are feeling ill (as I was when it arrived) it will make you feel better and, if you are already well and happy, it will make you even more so.
Sheer and utter delight from start to finish. I will end as I started. This is a lovely lovely lovely book.
Yes, indeed.
Which leads me to the second recommendation I have for everyone, which is of a bookseller.
Look Back in Love in the original being fairly scarce and rather highly priced when found, the book I have in hand is a beautifully produced reprint from Slightly Foxed Editions, who specialize in (among other things) “pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs.”
Take a good look at their list of offerings. I’ve read enough of these to be able to say that whoever is searching out these memoirs to republish has a keen eye for an excellent read. Well done, Slightly Foxed! If I’m ever in London my bookish pilgrimage will include their store (either before or after a sure-to-be-costly visit to Persephone – how can one possibly choose?!) to bow down at the source (as it were) of some of the best-chosen and best-produced vintage reprints currently available.
While not exactly cheap – a postpaid copy to Canada set me back a rather sobering £19, or about $35 Canadian dollars – I justified the cost with the thought that I was supporting a most worthwhile enterprise.
My Slightly Foxed edition is a joy to handle and to read, being compact and neatly cloth bound with a handy ribbon marker, a text block of smooth, creamy paper, and a nicely legible font. My only regret is that it does not contain the photographs included in the original edition; I love the inclusion of photos in memoirs as it adds so much to be able to see the characters and places referred to. But Dodie Smith’s words give such a wonderfully clear picture of both people and surroundings that one can envision the scenes perfectly well without visual aids.
I was so very pleased with this first volume of Dodie Smith’s memoirs – which takes her to the age of fourteen – that I have just tracked down and ordered the middle two volumes of the remaining three autobiographical books, Look Back with Mixed Feelings, and Look Back with Astonishment. I had already acquired Look Back with Gratitude, the last of the four, and though I have leafed through it with anticipation I am being stern with myself and will be saving it to read last, to maintain a chronological order.
And here, to further pique your interest (those few of you who haven’t already discovered this gem for yourselves) is a random page scan. Open this book anywhere and similar anecdotes abound. Even out of context, isn’t this a joy?
(Click to enlarge for ease of reading.)
Leaves & Pages 
I only have one Slightly Fixed edition. I have toyed with getting this one though 🙂 sounds great.
It *is* a really lovely memoir; as witty and funny as one might expect from this writer; a fond remembrance of her much-loved family, too.
Oh, lovely, lovely. I so adored “Castle” that this book will have to be added pronto to my pile. And thank you for the wonderful recommendation of Slightly Foxed Editions. Can’t wait to look through.
Many tempting titles! 🙂
I managed to get my parents to bring me a copy back last year when they went to England. Would love to read the others!
I’m hoping they are as good as this first one. I have high hopes. 🙂
I am fighting off the urge to immediately order all the volumes.
I have succumbed. 🙂 Looking forward to moving forward with Dodie’s next installments; am tempted to read #4 which I have but am going to be firm and wait for #2 & #3.
I’ve been wanting this for ages and ages, and I think you’ve just given me the push I needed to place an order. It would be such a good investment ….
It’s a very pleasant thing. I know I’ll be re-reading it. 🙂
I still have this waiting on my shelves (in the Slightly Foxed edition, naturally) and I know I have a treat in store. And speaking of stores, you are going to loved Slightly Foxed when (not if!) you visit. They had both D.E. Stevenson and Angela Thirkell books (old ones, not just the in-print stuff) when I visited last year so of course I thought it was the most wonderful bookstore I’d ever been to.
It’s rather painful just thinking about it… old book shopping at the very source, as it were! Ah, well, we do what we can with what we have. Lovely, lovely internet – changed my world regarding book buying, in a very good way. Still buy most of my new books at my local indie book store, but so much of what I want to read is out of print. But thanks to such as Slightly Foxed, a goodish number of these vintage things are coming back into circulation. Bless them!
And you will *love* Look Back with Love. Enjoy!
I love Dodie Smith – she’s up there with Margery Sharp – so must get on to this. I really enjoyed Valerie Grove’s biography of her a few years ago, did you read that?
Haven’t read it yet, but it’s coming in the mail – ordered it to go along with the rest of the 4-volume autobiography – will be interesting to get an outside point-of-view, too. Fascinating character, was Dodie Smith.
“Look Back with Mixed Feelings” is a good title for a book (or a life). I keep forgetting Dodie Smith wrote all these memoirs! I shall have to see if my university library has copies of them all. (They probably have, wouldn’t you think?)
I would hope that these are in the university library system. Good luck finding them; if this first is any indication they will all be excellent reading, giving a new perspective on Dodie’s sometimes rather unique fictional forays.
Thanks for introducing me to this book. I didn’t know it existed and I love her I Capture the Castle. I’m off to look for an affordable edition now!
It’s a great memoir.
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