Ark Baby (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Liz Jensen
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1844-2006
- Setting: England
- Principal Characters: Tobias Phelps, Dr. Ivanhoe Scrapie, Charlotte Scrapie, Violet Scrapie
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Nineteenth century, Future, Religion, Abandoned children, Adoption or adopted children, Genetics, Fertility, Evolution
- Locales: England
Tobias Phelps is a foundling, deposited as a very new baby on the altar in a church under the care of Parson Phelps in the village of Thunder Spit on the Northumbrian coast of England. Parson Phelps, mistaking the baby boy for a piglet at first, accepts him as a gift from God to himself and his wife, childless after many years. Tobias is an extraordinarily hairy infant, and he has suffered a serious wound to his coccyx, but the warm-hearted and grateful Phelpses take him to their bosoms and rear the foundling as their own. For five years he does not speak, but upon his fifth birthday,...
[The entire page is 2127 words long]
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