Flora Thompson: The Story of the "Lark Rise" Writer

by Gillian Lindsay

In 'Lark Rise To Candleford' and 'Heatherley' Flora Thompson wrote the story of her Victorian country childhood and her youth in village post offices. She was sixty when she wrote her well-known books but she had spent a lifetime serving her apprenticeship as a naturalist and a writer. This biography tells the story of her life and her struggles as a writer. Flora Thompson’s books opened windows on to the lost world of the hamlet, the village and small country towns.

Genres: Biography

234 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1990

Reviews

[Janet Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A world gone by. As a background study of the world of Flora Thompson this makes for some enjoyable reading and delivers plenty of detail that “Lark Rise” omits or skirts around. She starts in Juniper Hill (Lark Rise), the hamlet where Flora Jane Timms (Thomson) was born which was not much more than a handful of humble cottages and a pub. No church. No school. For the school Flora Timms had to walk twenty minutes down the road to the next hamlet, Cottisford. For her father it was an inconvenient Sunday arrangement when the vicar rambled on and the pub was about to close. Not that her father was, it seems as fond of churchgoing as he was of the demon drink.

Gillian Lindsay takes us on through her career in the post office and her struggle as a married woman, at home with children, as a “kitchen-table” writer, to finally having her work accepted. It’s all there and there are some splendid photos to put you in the mood.

[Sarah Dunsbee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, early part mostly what you can gather from the books and she still seems a bit illusive at end,but then a ordinary woman who lived in the past and was not an outgoing social butterfly would not leave behind great piles of notice... lovely to see the photos and read some of her later countryside accounts. What a lot of work she put in to helping aspiring writers in those days long before the internet or other ways of easy communication far afield.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is interesting. I read it as Flora Thompson is a distant cousin. I found the writing to be a little too fauning.