Quiller-Couch was born in the town of Bodmin, Cornwall, by the union of two ancient local families, the Quiller family and the Couch family, and was the third in a line of intellectuals from the Couch family. His younger sisters Florence Mabel and Lilian M. were also writers and folklorists. His father, Dr. Thomas Quiller Couch (d. 1884), was a noted physician, folklorist and historian. He married Mary Ford and lived at 63, Fore Street, Bodmin, until his death in 1884. His grandfather, Jonathan Couch, was an eminent naturalist, also a physician, historian, classicist, apothecary, and illustrator (particularly of fish). His son, Bevil Brian Quiller-Couch, was a war hero and poet, whose romantic letters to his fianc e, the poet May Wedderburn Cannan, were published in Tears of War. He also had a daughter, Foy Felicia, to whom Kenneth Grahame inscribed a first edition of his The Wind in the Willows attributing Quiller-Couch as the inspiration for the character Ratty
One day, when she and her boy were out playing, the boy stopped for a moment. He stood and smiled at her with the sun at his back -- and his shadow lay upon the whitened steps. But the silhouette was not that of a little breeched boy at all, but of a little girl in petticoats -- with long curls, where the charwoman's son was close-cropped "The Magic Shadow" is one of the dozen-plus stories of everyday life -- and of not-so-everyday delight and wonder -- in Naughts and Crosses, by the author of The Splendid Spur.
One day, when she and her boy were out playing, the boy stopped for a moment. He stood and smiled at her with the sun at his back -- and his shadow lay upon the whitened steps. But the silhouette was not that of a little breeched boy at all, but of a little girl in petticoats -- with long curls, where the charwoman's son was close-cropped "The Magic Shadow" is one of the dozen-plus stories of everyday life -- and of not-so-everyday delight and wonder -- in Naughts and Crosses, by the author of The Splendid Spur.