 "The Children of the New Forest" was written during Marryat's years of retirement in Norfolk, and it was his last novel published during his lifetime.Marryat would sometimes travel to Hampshire to stay at his brother George's country house, Chewton Glen (now a five star hotel), on the edge of the New Forest.It was here that he gathered material for his novel, which is set in and around the real-life manor of Arnewood (spelled without the "e" in Marryat's novel) just south of the village of Sway.