Story ID: mid/early 20thC, British, child buys 'fire dogs' at auction

May 19, 2018 2:15 AM

The main plot point is that they see 'fire dogs' up for auction and feel compelled to buy them, expecting them to be animal dogs, not the metal implements you use in a log-burning fireplace. Read in the 1980s, but written or set earlier, pre-1950s I think. I remember it as a book where each chapter was a separate adventure, but all about the same charaters.

Googling is made complicated by the Megan Dix book the 'great fire dogs' about rescue animals.

any ideas?

posted by AFII to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

sounds like something by E. Nesbitt
posted by Morpeth at 3:30 AM on May 19, 2018

This sounds very familiar to me, I also thought perhaps E Nesbitt. Other writers that sprang to mind were Helen Creswell (Bagthorpe family books) or Eve Garnett (Family at One End Street), though I don't think they were short stories.
On Googling, I did come up with a short story by Joan Aiken called 'The Fire Dogs', in a collection of short stories called 'Up the Chimney Down'. I can't find a synopsis, but I definitely read this collection as a kid, and Joan Aiken wrote many stories about the Armitage children, usually with one or two stories about them in each collection of short stories, so maybe that's a starting point?
posted by kumonoi at 6:17 AM on May 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Nesbitt & Aiken are great suggestions; I'm not sure about the Aiken story, it seems like a big coincidence, but none of the rest of the stories in the collection ring any bells (and, I confess, I never finished Wolves of Wiloughby Chase - just... couldn't get into it as a kid...)
posted by AFII at 11:37 AM on May 19, 2018