Draft:Boy Without a Name

Boy Without a Name is a 1975 children's book by Penelope Lively, published by William Heinemann.

Plot
In the England of the 1640s (during the reign of Charles I), a nameless and illiterate orphan boy returns to his birthplace of Swinfield village, whose parish priest gives him the first name of "Thomas" to fulfill the area's record-keeping requirements. Thomas, who was once an apprentice to a miller who had recently died, soon becomes one for a stonemason. Over time, after he learns to write, he musters up enough courage to inscribe his full name—Thomas Mason—upon stone. Having found a sense of belonging, he ventures off to play with the other village children.

Background
Boy Without a Name was Penelope Lively's first non-fantasy title and historically based work; it was "commissioned by William Heinemann as part of its Long Ago Children Books series."

Themes
In his 2006 book Four British Fantasists, Charles Butler identified Boy Without a Name as a thematic follow-up to Lively's earlier novel The Driftaway; the protagonists of both books have no parish to call home, and their tales take their ignorance by society into account. In turn, the Swinfield boy is introduced as one unaware of England's ruler or any other nations beyond that realm. At the end of the book, "[t]he two parts of [Thomas Mason's] name...equitably acknowledge both his own and the village's roles in the creation of his identity." As Margery Fisher remarked in her Growing Point journal, "The search for an identity and a place in the world is one which most children will appreciate."

Release and reception
The book was published in 1975 by Heinemann in the United Kingdom, and Parnassus Press in the United States; reviews were generally positive. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books gave it an "R" ("Recommended") grade on account of the "delicately detailed illustrations" and the story's "timeless quality". Margery Fisher wrote, "A moment of humour, when Thomas wins the friendship of the village lads by walking on his hands, lightens a tale of effort and doubt which has an air of historical reality about it." Kirkus Reviews was comparatively muted: The staff criticised the effectiveness of Ann Dalton's art, and added, "[T]he transformation from speechless outcast to proud craftsman has been too swift and fortuitous[;] [Thomas' obsessions in his trade are] too pat to justify Lively's solemn, self revering prose." In a 1993 biography on the author, Molly Hurley Moran placed it in a subcategory of "short, easy-to-read, heavily illustrated books" which took readers, aged seven to nine, back into the past to help them learn about the customs of the time and "[look at a] world...very different from their own."