Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Cats! Some are sane, some are mad and some are good and some are bad. Meet magical Mr Mistoffelees, sleepy Old Deuteronomy and curious Rum Tum Tugger. But you'll be lucky to meet Macavity because Macavity's not there! In 1925 T.S. Eliot became co-director of Faber & Faber, who remain his publishers to this day. Throughout the 1930s he composed the now famous poems about Macavity, Old Deuteronomy, Mr Mistoffelees and many other cats, under the name of 'Old Possum'. In 1981 Eliot's poems were set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber as Cats which went on to become the longest-running Broadway musical in history. This new edition, published on the 70th anniversary of the book and on the 80th anniversary of Faber & Faber, contains original colour illustrations by the award-winning illustrator of The Gruffalo, Axel Scheffler.

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St Louis, Missouri, USA. He settled in England in 1915 and published his first book of poems in 1917. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
Axel Scheffler was born in 1957 in Hamburg, Germany. He has achieved worldwide acclaim for his children's book illustration and has created many bestsellers including the award-winning The Gruffalo. He lives in London.