Book· 1940· Drama

Lassie Come-Home

by Eric Knight

Lassie Come-Home: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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Real-world influences

Events, places, movements and ideas outside fiction that this work is recorded as drawing on.

Nature & Animals

Real world

Real-world influenceHIGH
  • Dogs
  • Human-animal bond

Eric Knight based Lassie on his own collie, and the story of a dog sold away by a poor Yorkshire family who crosses Britain to return is built on the loyalty of the breed.

About the work

Lassie Come-Home

A collie named lassie has to be sold because her family are having bad times . Lassie escapes twice but when her new owner takes her to a place too far to run from will lassie be able to make the journey back to her home ? A collie undertakes a thousand-mile journey in order to once again meet her former master at the school gate. Lassie is Joe's prize collie and constant companion. But when Joe's father loses his job, Lassie must be sold. Three times she escapes from her new owner, and three times she returns home to Joe, until finally she is taken to the remotest part of Scotland -- too far a journey for any dog to make alone. But Lassie is not just any dog. 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. The motion picture was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry. A remake of Lassie Come Home, entitled Lassie, was released in 2005.