A beloved possession, this book was given to me by my mother for Christmas 1969, when I was six.  You can just see below her dedication in the illustration of the inside front cover. 

Like her, I loved the poem presented Robert Browning’s superb translation from the German.  I re-read it many times, organically learning parts by heart and entranced by the illustrations, creations of the twin-sister-duo Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone. 

As we enter a new year, and I soon embark on a new decade, I’ve decided to learn the whole poem by heart, and once I do, I’ll do a podcast. 

See here for this and other new year ‘readolutions’, and here for an essay on the joys of memorizing poetry, here in an audio version.

Source: The Pied Piper of Hamelin, trans. by Robert Browning, illus. by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone (London: Dean & Sons, 1969)