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Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats: with illustrations by Rebecca Ashdown: 1 (Faber Children's Classics)

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The best-known musical adaptation of the poems is Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, which was premiered in the West End of London in 1981 and on Broadway in 1982.

S. Eliot's classic and delightful collection of poetry about cats, with whimsical illustrations by Edward Gorey.I have craved world building, esoteric codes, political machinations, something to offset the Bob Corkers of my mind. All of this is definitely deliberate, and does make for one of the strangest movies I have seen in a long time, even though it is based on such a well-known book. I especially loved “The Rum Tum Tugger,” about a contrary cat who always wants what he can’t have and never wants what he’s offered: “When you let him in, then he wants to be out; / He’s always on the wrong side of every door. The acclaimed poet of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, among numerous other poems, prose, and works of drama, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

Mistoffelees, Macavity, the Mystery Cat,Asparagus, Bustopher Jones, the man about town, and Skimbleshanks, the railway cat. They were collected and published in 1939, with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley. Later the Old Man refers to one cat in particular, "Gus", short for "Asparagus", and goes on to recite parts of "Macavity: the Mystery Cat". For instance it would have been good if Scheffler had drawn Growltiger attacking each of the animals and creatures in his path. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.With the possible exception of (Aspara)gus, these names appear to be particular rather than given names of the creatures. In his book of practical cats, Old Possum, (1888 -- 1965), a great modernist poet, let his hair down. This is a charming book written in verse, and each chapter is dedicated to a different kind of cat with its own kind of personality. They have also been published in versions illustrated by Edward Gorey (1982), Axel Scheffler (2009) and Rebecca Ashdown (2014). Scheffler's illustrations are kid-friendly but yet they don't condescend or become overly cute and childish.

A number of the names and rhymes were culturally familiar for me even though I’d not read it before. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent.

Okay, after I finished reading this classic, I decided to gird the proverbial loins and watch the Tom Hooper movie for the first time.

No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins.

Now that I've read it, I was quite shocked at how close some of the songs are in the musical to the poetry. Ricks and McCue identify "fambly" as a variant spelling and Eliot frequently used it in his letters to the Tandy family.

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