travel light naomi mitchison

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

You Must Read This

Crossroads and coins: naomi mitchison's 'travel light'.

Amal El-Mohtar

Travel Light

Buy featured book.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

• Independent Bookstores

When I was 7 years old, living in a flat overlooking Hamra street in Ras Beirut, I read The Hobbit . I fell in love with it. I memorized all the songs and made up tunes to them; I memorized all the riddles and asked them of whoever would listen; I made up my own adventures in Mirkwood, my own encounters with Gandalf and Beorn and the Elves. I also read everything I could about Tolkien, and went in search of anything else he'd written. I decided that I too would be a writer, and that I would start with poems and work my way into fiction the way he did. In many ways I can trace much of my life's trajectory to that encounter with a single book at a delicate age — a time when all the world's paths are laid out before you, and you wait for someone or something to beckon you on to one instead of another, into one self rather than another.

I say this because almost 20 years later — sitting on my bed in a cold, damp room in Cornwall, floundering toward the end of a second graduate degree — I read Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light , and suddenly felt as if I were seeing my life thus far from a great height. I felt, very powerfully, that I had been waiting for it, and that it was telling me the story of the person I might have been had I read it when I was a child.

Travel Light is the story of Halla, a girl born to a king but cast out onto the hills to die. She lives among bears; she lives among dragons. But the time of dragons is passing, and Odin All-Father offers Halla a choice: Will she stay dragonish and hoard wealth and possessions, or will she travel light?

Contrary to appearances, this is not a simple book with a didactic moral at the end. It begins as a fable but resists conventional fable structures, moving from mythic to recorded history in the way the sun moves across the sky. In the dawn of the book, Halla is called Bearsbairn and Heroesbane; at noon she is Halla Godsgift; as evening draws on, her earlier names cast shadows over her narrative. The story shifts smoothly from bear-nurses to the heart of Constantinople, from the dragon-imparted economics of sheep and princesses to the intrigues of the Holy Roman Empire. And through it all Halla remains Halla, changing from protagonist of her own story to miracle of someone else's, but always and utterly herself.

Naomi Mitchison in her London garden in 1979. Fred Mott/Getty Images hide caption

I had never encountered Mitchison's work before reading Travel Light . A cursory Googling revealed, to my astonishment, that there were good reasons for me to think of this book and The Hobbit as two sides of my heart's coin: Mitchison and Tolkien were good friends, and Mitchison was among the first readers of The Lord of the Rings before it was published ( Travel Light was published in 1952, Lord of the Rings in 1954). Reading further I discovered, to my astonishment, that Mitchison had written more than 90 books, that she died in 1999 at the age of 101, that she had led a spectacular life full of travel and social activism, that she had written science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction and poetry — and that she was nowhere to be found in the canon of genre fiction. Here was a woman who had, in Travel Light, almost certainly written certain points in conversation with The Hobbit, and more: In her Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962), she wrote in the voice of a character who pursued space exploration that privileged communication over conquest; looked at free love, birth control and child-rearing with delight; and seriously considered Islam as a viable religious choice for herself. Naomi Mitchison was imaginative, progressive and astonishing, but in the course of three English degrees — almost 10 years of studying literature — I had never even heard of her.

That Mitchison's life and works should have been so unfairly relegated to secret history drove home my feeling of books as points of divergence to alternate timelines; that having read The Hobbit rather than Travel Light at that fragile, formative moment of being a child in Lebanon standing at a crossroads of languages, religions and literary traditions nudged me into a different life. Who might I have been if I had met Halla Bearsbairn before Bilbo Baggins? How different might my attitude toward dragons have been if I'd met Uggi before Smaug? How different would the spiritual landscapes of fantasy and science fiction be if they had accepted as antecedents works that showed a corrupt Byzantine Christianity and sympathy toward Islam?

But, most crucially for me, I wonder: Where might I have gone if, instead of a middle-aged Hobbit enamored of his pantry, I had embraced a girl who lost three homes before choosing the open road?

I don't regret, at all, having The Hobbit at the core of me, and will defend its songs and riddles and elves and spiders to the end of my days. But reading Travel Light unseamed something in me, made me feel that my certainties needed revisiting, and assured me that somewhere within me was, still, a 7-year-old girl waiting to be beckoned onto a path of luggage-less travel, of dragons and Valkyries, languages and air — and that with Travel Light , she'd taken the first step in their direction.

• Literature & Fiction
• Genre Fiction

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video, download Flash Player

Follow the author

Travel Light Paperback – Aug. 11 2005

Purchase options and add-ons.

• ISBN-10 1931520143
• ISBN-13 978-1931520140
• Publisher Small Beer Press
• Publication date Aug. 11 2005
• Language English
• Dimensions 13.97 x 1.02 x 17.78 cm
• Print length 144 pages
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product description

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Small Beer Press (Aug. 11 2005)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1931520143
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931520140
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 177 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 1.02 x 17.78 cm
• #739 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction
• #3,381 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
• #4,336 in Fairy Tales

About the author

Naomi mitchison.

Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland but traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Customer reviews

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top review from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon and Our Planet
• Modern Slavery Statement
• Investor Relations
• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• Amazon.ca Rewards Mastercard
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon Cash
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns Are Easy
• Manage your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Customer Service
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads
• Amazon.com.ca ULC | 40 King Street W 47th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5H 3Y2 |1-877-586-3230

• Literature & Fiction
• Mythology & Folk Tales

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Travel Light (Virago Modern Classics) Paperback – January 1, 1992

• Language English
• Publisher Virago Pr
• Publication date January 1, 1992
• Dimensions 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 0860685624
• ISBN-13 978-0860685623
• See all details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

PRODUCT CERTIFICATION (1)

Carbon Neutral Certified by SCS Global Services means the product’s carbon emissions have been measured and reduced, with any remaining emissions offset.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Virago Pr; Reprint edition (January 1, 1992)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0860685624
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0860685623
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches

About the author

Naomi mitchison.

Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland but traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Travel Light

• 3.9 • 14 Ratings

Publisher Description

" Travel Light is the story of Halla, a girl born to a king but cast out onto the hills to die. She lives among bears; she lives among dragons. But the time of dragons is passing, and Odin All-Father offers Halla a choice: Will she stay dragonish and hoard wealth and possessions, or will she travel light?" —Amal El-Mohtar, NPR, You Must Read This From the dark ages to modern times, from the dragons of medieval forests to Constantinople, this is a fantastic and philosophical fairy-tale journey that will appeal to fans of Harry Potter, Diana Wynne Jones, and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. "No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison.”— The Observer "Read it now."—Ursula K. Le Guin "You will love this book."—Holly Black "The enchantments of Travel Light contain more truth, more straight talking, a grittier, harder-edged view of the world than any of the mundane descriptions of daily life you will find in … science fiction stories." — Paul Kincaid, SF Site "A gem of a book." — Strange Horizons "Every page is full of magic and wonder….well worth seeking out."— Rambles "Combines the best of Rowling and Pullman, being full of magic and fantasy with the hard edge of reality sharp at its edges." — The New Review/LauraHird.com

Customer Reviews

Travel light.

Very enjoyable.

Did not receive the correct book

I downloaded Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison but I received a completely different book which I did not want. I am very disappointed...

Correct book now

They've fixed the issue with the wrong book be downloaded.

ebook ∣ Peapod Classics

By naomi mitchison.

Add Book To Favorites

Is this your library?

Sign up to save your library.

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

9781931520140

Peapod Classics

Naomi Mitchison

Small Beer Press

01 August 2005

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:.

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Travel light

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

181 Previews

13 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station43.cebu on June 8, 2022

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Naomi Mitchison obituary

Among us, taking a century’s notes

Naomi Mitchison, who has died aged 101, was a Haldane polymath. Her father was John Scott Haldane, CH, FRS. Her uncle, Lord Haldane, was Lord Chancellor in the first Labour government (1924). Her brother was the late Prof J B S Haldane. She leaves three distinguished scientist sons and two talented daughters. But among what could have been an oppressive family braininess, she asserted her own diversity of talent and original imagination in writing, public service and private friendships.

Mitchison was born in Edinburgh into a well-to-do family, where plenty of servants and presentation at court were taken for granted, together with the social responsibilities of a liberal family in an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity.

Much of her young life was spent at Oxford, where she went to the Dragon School. In 1916, she married old Etonian Gilbert Mitchison while he was on a week's leave from the battlefields of Flanders, where he was later wounded, suffering a fractured skull with after-effects which took a long while to heal. He was from a well-off family, but after the war he made his way as a young barrister; success did not happen quickly.

Both of them passionately wanted the post-war world to be a different and better place and were determined to do something about it. They were Fabian Labour campaigners. Dick Mitchison became a Labour MP and went to the House of Lords in 1964 - which his wife thought funny as long as nobody called her Lady Mitchison.

With explosive energy, Mitchison managed to write prolifically and variously; to work in the pioneer days at the North Kensington family planning clinic and for many other good causes. She helped her husband in election campaigns and with his constituency duties. From the late 1930s, she kept a diary for the Mass Observation organisation. She even starred in a movie for the short-lived Socialist Film Council - The Road to Hell (1933), playing a desperate working-class wife rebuffed by a bored Public Assistance Board. And she brought up five children; there would have been six, but a much-loved son died of meningitis in 1927 and left a painful scar.

The Mitchison house at Hammersmith was famous for its parties in happy or anxious times. The guest lists covered the widest spectrum - the Huxleys, Wyndham Lewis, the Coles, Postgates, Laskis, Stracheys, E M Forster, A P Herbert, Gertrude Hermes; and always there were the unknown proteges, refugees and strange lost foreigners from all over the world.

This generous style of hospitality continued at their home at Carradale in Argyll. The large house gathered in all kinds of waifs and strays among the famous and unreproached scroungers; and then the Mitchison grandchildren and great-grandchildren joined the mix. Naomi's wartime diary, Among You Taking Notes... (1985), is a vivid description of that period, and of her own pivotal role in it.

Fortunately, Mitchison was blessed with an incomparable gift of concentration. The typewriter on her desk in the crowded drawing-room at Carradale was always uncovered and she would work there busily while the guests played Scrabble, strummed guitars, a fisherman came about the salmon, a ghillie to consult about skinning a deer, or just somebody asking what was for supper.

Often Mitchison was writing letters. She gave generously of her time and trouble to people all over the world, known and unknown, including those who sent their beloved (but useless) manuscripts. Or to people like the poet Stevie Smith, who wrote out of the blue and began a long correspondence and lasting friendship. The uneasy young W H Auden treasured her letters - or, rather, he loved getting them (he never kept letters once he'd read and answered them).

Mitchison was able to write anywhere, which helped because - as a compulsive traveller - she could get on with her writing on planes or in trains. She went to the US in the 1930s, because she was worried about sharecroppers; to Vienna in 1934 when the Nazi-era storm clouds gathered, and she smuggled letters from endangered people to Switzerland in her knickers.

In one of her autobiographical books, Mucking Around (1981), she describes her haphazard travels in five continents over 50 years. In 1952, she went to Moscow as a member of the Authors' World Peace Appeal. She went regularly to Africa, especially to Botswana, where she was made a sort of tribal mother to the Bakgatla people and helped them practically. Wherever she was in the world, she seemed to have an instinctive understanding of the country and people around her, and this is reflected in her writing about these varied places.

Mitchison was never sure how many books she had written. She often said it was about 70. The articles were uncountable, from book reviews for the old Time and Tide magazine and the New Statesman to practical essays on farming, campaigning articles, recollections and reflections. The books were varied in style and subject - from the somewhat disorderly candour of her autobiographical volumes to carefully researched historical novels set in Celtic, Hellenic or Byzantine times. The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) was a best seller, in which her mystical intellect sloughed away the centuries.

There was a book on Socrates, written with R H S Crossman; poems (The Cleansing of the Knife, 1979); and Oil for the Highlands? (1974). Life was not all gadding about the world. She cared deeply about the problems of Scotland and served on the Argyll County Council and on the Highlands and Islands Development Council. She was made a CBE in 1985. But all this was not enough. She was a serious botanist and gardener and a practical farmer. Then there was her long-standing interest in archaeology, and latterly she had been working on the journeys of early peoples from Caithness to Orkney, and studying the neolithic cairns and the geomorphology of the Orkneys, especially the chambered cairn at Quanternass.

In later years, she was sometimes anxious and depressed - not for herself, but for the future. She often said that two wars in a lifetime were too many. She was totally opposed to nuclear weaponry and was fearful that science would destroy, rather than enrich, mankind.

In old age, she watched many of her generation die: but with great generosity of spirit she visited and comforted many of them to the end. There were still livelier times in life. She gave, as her recreation in Who's Who, 'burning rubbish' .

In You May Well Ask (1979) she wrote: 'We go with the wave of our time, getting whatever is to be got out of it.' Getting - and giving.

Most viewed