The Time Garden
core novel 1958 Tales of Magic
Record
| First published | 1958 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.13 (4,461 ratings, collected 2026-10-06) |
| Page count | 193 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780152020750 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
Roger, Ann, Eliza and Jack, the four cousins of Knight's Castle, have longed ever since for another magic adventure, and they get it when they are sent to spend a summer at an old house by the sea in Massachusetts. In the garden grows a wild bank of thyme, and in it, as its guardian explains to them, grows time itself: olden time, future time and common time, with a different kind in every variety of the herb. Rubbing a sprig carries the children to a moment in the past, and their adventures take them into history and literature alike, to the Underground Railroad before the Civil War, to Queen Elizabeth's England, to the Boston of Little Women, and into a reunion, across the years, with the children of Half Magic, whose own magic turns out to be entangled with theirs.
Where it sits
- Universe: Tales of Magic
- Series: Tales of Magic core; position 4 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Edward Eager
Notes
- From the series record (Tales of Magic): Edward Eager's seven novels of magic breaking into the lives of ordinary American children, written in open homage to E. Nesbit: two linked pairs (Half Magic and Magic by the Lake; Knight's Castle and The Time Garden, whose children are the first pair's children and cousins), two about a possibly magic wishing well, and Seven-Day Magic, in which the children meet characters from the earlier books.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Tales of Magic: position 4 of 7: previous Magic by the Lake (1957) · next Magic or Not? (1959)
Sources
← Tales of Magic dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.