Leon Garfield - Themes, Influences, Style

Themes, Influences, Style

Garfield's novels for children all have a historical setting. In the early novels this is mostly the late eighteenth century, from John Diamond on, it is the nineteenth century. But they are not novels about historical events, which are rarely depicted, or social conditions, which provide only the starting point for the personal stories of the characters. In the few novels where Garfield handles actual events, he writes from the limited and subjective viewpoint of his characters.

The historical books owe much to Dickens and Stevenson. The latter's Treasure Island clearly provided a model for Jack Holborn, with its shifting alliances of manipulative characters in pursuit of a treasure; and Garfield also acknowledges the brothers from Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae as an inspiration for the book. Beyond these specific debts, Garfield shares Stevenson's fondness for binding a relatively conservative hero to a more forceful personality outside of conventional morality. Another recurring plot form (most evident in Smith and The December Rose), in which an outcast is integrated into a supporting household, owes more to Dickens. Garfield also shares with Dickens a strong preference for an urban setting, generally London.

Garfield's father had broken contact with him when he divorced his Jewish wife; and Garfield scholar Roni Natov sees this difficult relationship as a major influence on his work, giving particular significance to the fathers and father figures in the novels. This view is partly supported by Garfield's own commentary.