The Little Locksmith
- Author Katharine Butler Hathaway
- Narrator Julia Atwood
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Run Time 8 hours and 26 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Age groups: children, Biography: general, Child, developmental and lifespan psychology, Feminism and feminist theory, Gender studies: women and girls, Literature: history and criticism.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- £7.99
- £6.99
- £5.99
- £4.99
- £3.99
Listen to a sample
What to expect
In 1895, a specialist straps five-year-old Katharine Hathaway, then suffering from spinal tuberculosis, to a board with halters and pulleys in a failed attempt to prevent her from becoming a “hunchback” like the “little locksmith” who does odd jobs at her family’s home. Forced to endure her confinement for ten years, Katharine remains immobile until age fifteen, only to find that none of it has prevented her from developing a deformity of her own.
The Little Locksmith charts Katharine’s struggle to transcend physical limitations and embrace her life, her body, and herself. Her spirit and courage prevail as she expands her world far beyond the boundaries prescribed by her family and society: she attends Radcliffe College, forms deep friendships, begins to write, and in 1921 purchases a house of her own that she fashions into a space for guests, lovers, and artists. Revealing and inspirational, The Little Locksmith stands as a testimony to Katharine’s aspirations and desires—for independence, love, and the pursuit of her art.
Critics Review
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“You must not miss it…[The Little Locksmith] is the kind of book that cannot come into being without great living and great suffering and a rare spirit behind it.”
New York Times -
“A powerful revelation of spiritual truth.”
Boston Globe -
“Katharine Butler Hathaway…was the kind of heroine whose deeds are rarely chronicled…[She took] a life which fate had cast in the mold of a frightful tragedy and redesign[ed] it into a quiet, modest work of art.”
New Yorker -
“This remarkably un-self-pitying book remains poignant and truthful. Hathaway’s descriptions of the writing process are beautiful and on the mark. [She] treats the actual events in her life as practically irrelevant: the story she emphasizes is her spiritual and creative struggle to claim ‘selfish’ time to write, her intense loneliness, her startlingly frank observations about her sexuality, and her rebellion against the belief that an imperfect person does not experience desire.”
Publishers Weekly
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