Lassie Come-Home

Lassie Come-Home

First edition
Author	Eric Knight
Illustrator	Marguerite Kirmse
Language	English
Publisher	The John C. Winston Company
Publication date	1940
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print

Lassie Come-Home is a novel written by Eric Knight about a rough collie's trek over many miles to be reunited with the boy she loves.^[1] Knight had introduced the reading public to the canine character of Lassie in a magazine story published on 17 December 1938, in The Saturday Evening Post, a story which he later expanded to the novel and published in 1940 to critical and commercial success. In 1943, the novel was adapted to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film Lassie Come Home starring Roddy McDowall as the boy Joe Carraclough, Pal as Lassie, and featuring Elizabeth Taylor.^[2] The motion picture was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry. A remake of Lassie Come Home, entitled Lassie, was released in 2005.

The hyphen in the title is both an adjective referring to Lassie's purpose as a dog that must turn home and it is the name given to the dog in the final chapter^[3] where the boy says to the dog: "Ye brought us luck. 'Cause ye're a come-homer. Ye're my Lassie Come-Home. Lassie Come-Home. That's thy name! Lassie Come-Home".^[3] In another part of the book, Hynes, a cynical character who oversees the Duke of Rudling's animals, falsely accuses the Carraclough family of training such dogs for fraud: "I know all about yer and yer come-home dogs. Training 'em to break loose and run right back 'ome when they're sold, so then ye can sell 'em to someone else."^[4] Film adaptations of the novel do not include the hyphen.

Reception

Lassie Come-Home won the 1943 Young Reader's Choice Award.^[5]

References

External links

• Lassie Come-Home at Faded Page (Canada)