Chimney Sweeps

Chimney Sweeps

Little did I know when I met Paul Ross at the TSL sponsored Meet the Author Day that I was meeting a chimney sweep: a real live chimney sweep! I’d read about them and seen pictures of them but assumed they were pretty much an extinct breed. How wrong I was!

Paul has since published a book for children about a chimney sweep – Rodney and his daughter Jemima go on adventures and solve mysteries using their special gifts. These are stories he told his own children when they were little and now his grandchildren get to see them in print.

Probably the most well-known chimney sweep is Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist followed closely by Charles Kingsley’s The Water-babies: A fairy tale for a land-baby. Hans Christian Anderson also wrote about The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep

And for those interested in a history of Chimney Sweeps in Britain, here’s a brief overview.

Storytellers can make great authors, many of the greatest authors, are people who wrote down the stories they told others. #amwriting pic.twitter.com/pB3zTWv0p6

— Writing & Editing (@WrtrStat) 15 January 2017

Thanks Pablo for the image