Product Description

Flora Thompson's immortal trilogy, containing "Lark Rise", "Over To Candleford" and "Candleford Green", is a heartwarming portrayal of country life at the close of the 19th century. This story of three closely related Oxfordshire communities - a hamlet, the nearby village and a small market town - is based on the author's experiences during childhood and youth. It chronicles May Day celebrations and forgotten children's games, the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations - all painted with a gaiety and freshness of observation that make this trilogy an evocative and sensitive memorial to Victorian rural England.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23336 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

About the Author
Born in Juniper Hill, Oxfordshire, Flora Thompson left school at 14 to work in the local post office. She married young, and wrote mass-market fiction to help support her increasing family. In her 60s she published the semi-autobiographical trilogy combined as LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD (1945). RICHARD MABEY is the author of some thirty books, including Whistling in the Dark: In Pursuit of the Nightingale, Beechcombings: the narratives of Trees, the ground-breaking and best-selling "cultural flora" Flora Britannica, and Gilbert White, which won the Whitbread Biography Award. His recent memoir Nature Cure was short-listed for three major literary awards. He writes for the Independent, the Guardian, Resurgence and Granta, and contributes frequently to BBC radio. He lives in Norfolk, in the Waveney Valley.

Customer Reviews

A fascinating tale of growing up in rural 19th c. England
This is the beautiful tale of Flora Thompson's life from childhood to adolecence in Victorian Oxfordshire. In the book she changes place names and describes event from the character of "Laura". They live in a small hamlet, in a farming community; and the detail of the people and little day to day things is fascinating. The people she describes are so complete... and throughout she tells us so much of her thoughts, emotions and fears, that you feel as if you have met her yourself. From a social history point of view, her descriptions of festivals and rural life, are invaluble. This is a long book, and a little slow in parts, but it is rich and worth reading. You will really be drawn to her character, and feel her highs and lows. It's not as bouncy and amusing as "Cider with Rosie", but it is poignant for its bare honesty. You will wipe away a tear or two whilst reading it, and I promise you won't forget it.

Returning to my own past
I first read this gem as a set book in school at around age 14, a London-born child educated in the City. The details of it never left me, 'Laura's' description of hamlet life in the 1880's were my benchmark for how poor honest country folk lived in those days, I could always refer to my recollections of the book, I was fascinated by the facts.

I finished re-reading it tonight, 37 years later and am still enchanted by the writer's simple and straightforward style and the vivid descriptions with such attention to detail. It's never fussy or sentimentalised, the reader comes to their own conclusion that material wealth isn't the secret to happiness, which is humbling when we compare today's standards with those of these simple people. Laura does well for herself, and the reader is glad for her but she never loses sight of who she is deep down.

I shall recommend that my young neice reads it, I doubt she'll enjoy it as I did but if only a little of the good natured common sense of the people is recognised that will be a good thing for a child brought up these days to know about. Am I really getting that old-fashioned?

A beautful book about a 'beautiful time'
Life was hard in those days but it was beautiful: well it is nice to think it was anyhow.
A lovely book that wanders reminising through the author's childhood, told with the clarity as if it had all just happened yesterday. Captivatingly written and extremely evocative.
A 'must read' book: close your eyes and dream what English rural life used to be like.
Enjoy!