Lark Rise to Candleford

by Flora Thompson, Bill Gallagher (Introduction)

Overview

Lark Rise to Candleford captures a piece of social history in this ever popular fictional account of an English rural upbringing between the wars.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition contains all three books – Lark Rise, Over to Candleford and Candleford Green, with an introduction by Bill Gallagher, screenwriter of the hugely popular BBC television adaptation.

Laura Timms spends her childhood in a country hamlet called Lark Rise. An intelligent and enquiring child, she is always attentive to the way of life around her – the lives of a farming community and nature as it transforms through the seasons, their working lives together and their celebrations. Whilst much is to be admired and cherished about her community, when she looks back on it as an adult she doesn’t shy away from describing hardship too. Laura attends the village school and leaves at the age of fourteen to work for the postmistress of the village of Candleford. There her eyes are opened to wider horizons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529038064
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	07/09/2020
Series:	Macmillan Collector's Library , #259
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	704
Sales rank:	234,054
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Flora Thompson was born in 1876 in Juniper Hill in Oxfordshire, the rural hamlet that she describes in Lark Rise. She was a bookish child who dreamt of being a writer. Her mother taught her to read before she started at the village school. She left school at fourteen to work as an assistant postmistress. She married in 1903 and moved to Bournemouth where she started writing her famous trilogy in her 60s. The three books were published between 1939 and 1943. Thompson died in 1947.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Note on the Text xxiv

Further Reading xxv

A Chronology of Flora Thompson xxvii

Lark Rise

I Poor People's Houses 3

II A Hamlet Childhood 20

III Men Afield 35

IV At the 'Wagon and Horses' 53

V Survivals 65

VI The Besieged Generation 87

VII Callers 109

VIII 'The Box' 124

IX Country Playtime 134

X Daughters of the Hamlet 148

XI School 167

XII Her Majesty's Inspector 183

XIII May Day 196

XIV To Church on Sunday 205

XV Harvest Home 226

Over To Candleford

XVI As They Were 247

XVII Hamlet Home 259

XVIII 'Once Upon a Time' 272

XIX 'A Bit of a Tell' 280

XX Mrs. Herring 294

XXI Over to Candleford 302

XXII Kind Friends and Relations 315

XXIII Sink or Swim 323

XXIV Laura Looks On 333

XXV Summer Holiday 342

XXVI Uncle Tom's Queer Fish 361

XXVII Gandleford Green 370

XXVIII Growing Pains 382

XXIX Exit Laura 395

Candleford Green

XXX From One Small World to Another 401

XXXI On Her Majesty's Service 415

XXXII The Green 429

XXXIII Penny Reading 447

XXXIV Neighbours 462

XXXV At the Post Office 480

XXXVI 'Such is Life!' 495

XXXVII 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!' 509

XXXVIII Letter-Carrier 522

XXXIX Change in the Village 542

Editorial Reviews

Our literature has no finer remembrancer . . . no observer so genuinely endearing.
—John Fowles

New Statesman

Flora Thompson's great memoir of her Oxfordshire girlhood [is] a model of the form. The richness of the language, the lingering over detail and incident creates a haunting classic.

The New York Times