About the Author:
Alfred Ollivant (1874–1927) was born in Old Charlton, Kent, the son of a colonel in the Royal Horse Artillery. Shortly after he graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, intending to pursue a career in the army, he was thrown from his horse and seriously injured. While beginning his recuperation from the accident (he was to remain under his doctors’ care for the next fourteen years), he wrote Owd Bob: The Grey Dog of Kenmuir (known in the United States as Bob, Son of Battle), which was a best seller both in the United Kingdom and the United States when it came out in 1898. Ollivant would go on to publish fourteen more novels, as well as various occasional essays, poems, and other works, including, during the First World War, a series of articles describing wartime life in England for an American audience.
Marguerite Kirmse (1885–1954) was born in Bournesmouth, England. She emigrated to the United States as an accomplished harpist in order to continue her musical education, but instead embarked on a highly successful career as an illustrator. She is best known for her drawings of dogs, including those in Lassie, Come-Home by Eric Knight.
Lydia Davis is the author of seven collections of stories, including Break It Down, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, and, most recently, Can’t and Won’t, as well as one novel, The End of the Story. Her Collected Stories were published as a single volume in 2009, and in 2013 she was awarded an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal for the Short Story, as well as the Man Booker International Prize. She is also the translator of many books from the French, most notably Proust’s Swann’s Way and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
From School Library Journal:
Gr 3–6—What's a childhood without dog stories, such as Lassie, Old Yeller, and Shiloh? With this new version of Ollivant's Owd Bob: The Grey Dog of Kenmuir, Davis ensures that Bob, son of Battle, is a name to be added to that list. First published in 1889, Ollivant's work follows two sheepdogs and their masters: prickly Adam McAdam and his brutish dog, Red Wull, who herds by force; and kindly James Moore, whose equally skilled but more gallant Bob keeps order through an intuitive understanding of sheep. These two arch rivals are about to go head to head in a contest that will prove which is the superior sheepdog. Adding to the drama, Adam's son, David, who recently lost his mother, attempts to court James's daughter, while by night, sheep are menaced by what appears to be a rogue sheepdog. Though this reissue keeps the original art by Marguerite Kirmse (best known for illustrating Eric Knight's Lassie, Come-Home), Davis translates the Cumbrian and Scottish dialect of the original into modern English, ensuring that this classic canine tale will once more find a home among readers.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.