AN ENGLISH BRASS AND BLACKED-IRON SERPENTINE FIREGRATE

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was a British-French writer and historian and one of the most influential English writers of the twentieth-century. He was known for his humourous, if sometimes dark, satirical writing as well as serious political and religous thought. His perhaps most famous work was Cautionary Tales for Children, published in 1907, satirising Victorian morality, with often bizarre stories such as Rebecca, who 'slammed doors for fun and perished miserably'. This work was to later heavily influence the works of Roald Dahl and his illustrator Quentin Blake.