Who wrote The Magic Pudding?
The Magic Pudding was written and illustrated by Australian artist Norman Lindsay and published in 1918. It is a comic tale about a cranky, walking, talking pudding that never runs out.
The book follows Bunyip Bluegum, a koala, who joins sailor Bill Barnacle and penguin Sam Sawnoff, owners of Albert, the magic pudding. Albert can turn into any flavour and always reappears whole after being eaten.
Pudding thieves, a possum and a wombat, keep trying to steal Albert, leading to fights, songs and courtroom scenes. The story is divided into four slices rather than chapters.
Norman Lindsay
Lindsay, born in Creswick, Victoria, in 1879, was a controversial artist known for paintings and etchings of nudes, as well as cartoons for The Bulletin. His home in the Blue Mountains is now a gallery.
The Magic Pudding was adapted into an animated film in 2000, with voices by John Cleese, Geoffrey Rush and Hugo Weaving, and it has been staged as a musical and puppet show.
It remains a children's classic, enjoyed for its silly humour, rhyming songs and Lindsay's lively drawings. The book has been reprinted many times, and Albert the pudding is one of the best-known characters in Australian children's literature.
Did You Know?
Lindsay reportedly wrote The Magic Pudding after a friend argued that children prefer stories about fairies, while Lindsay believed they preferred stories about food.