Flora Thompson – The Story of the 'Lark Rise' Writer
Gillian Lindsay

Cover of Flora Thompson by Gillian Lindsay

a biography of Flora Thompson

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Paperback - 234 pages, 26 photographs, wood engraved Chapter Headlings by Julie Neild
John Owen Smith; ISBN: 978-1-873855-53-9; May 2007
(Updated version of ISBN: 0-7090-4594-8; First published 1990, reprinted with corrections 1996)

Associated titles: Heatherley by Flora Thompson; On the Trail of Flora Thompson by John Owen Smith; 1925 Guide to Liphook by Flora Thompson; The Peverel Papers by Flora Thompson; Without Education or Encouragement by Ruth Collette Hoffman

Back Cover . Reviews . Contents . Illustrations . About the Author . Further information

Back Cover

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.

Reviews

The Lady
"Fifty years after the first publication of Lark Rise comes Gillian Lindsay's biography of its author. Flora Thompson uses contemporary photographs and delightful wood engravings to illustrate the story of this shy, intelligent girl who loved reading and the countryside ... With descriptions of family life and wartime struggles, the book gives a fascinating portrait of the author who was a pioneer of the conservationist movement."

Daily Express
"Many will remember Lark Rise to Candleford, a classic of old country life in an Oxfordshire village of the 1880s. Flora Thompson is Gillian Lindsay's gentle, moving story of the woman who wrote Lark Rise."

This England
"Anyone who has enjoyed Flora Thompson's novels will surely appreciate the opportunity to learn more about this exceptional woman ... Gillian Lindsay's book is the first full biography of Flora Thompson. Based on an earlier biographical essay and on interviews with the few people who still remember Flora Thompson ... it examines its subject's lifelong quest to become a writer and the reasons for her success."

Table of Contents

Chapters

List of Illustrations in Book

 1 Flora Thompson in her 20s
2 The cottage where Flora Thompson was born
3 Wrapper from the First edition of the trilogy
4 Cottisford Church
5 Old Queenie, the beewoman and lacemaker, 1880
6 Cottisford School, 1905
7 Fringford forge and post-office in the 1890s
8 The men at the forge at Fringford in the 1890s
9 A girl telegraphist in the 1890s
10 Flora, her sister and mother in the 1890s
11 Crossways Road, Grayshott in 1900
12 Flora's brother Edwin in uniform, about 1905
13 Flora and her daughter, in about 1905
14 Flora and her son Basil, 1911
15 Winton Library, Bournemouth in 1987
16 Flora wearing Edwin's badge as a brooch
17 Mildred Humble Smith
18 Dr Ronald Campbell Macfie
19 Liphook post-office during the First World War
20 The Square, Liphook in the early 1920s
21 Flora at her typewriter
22 Woolmer Gate, Grigg's Green in 1987
23 Dartmouth river front and post-office
24 The Outlook, Dartmouth
25 Flora Thompson, about 1945
26 Flora Thompson's memorial in Dartmouth cemetery

About the Author

Gillian Lindsay has written several books for children including: The Dormice Who Didn't, Fox Barn, The Toffee Apple Tree, The Biggest Boast and An Owl in Winter. As Anne Stratford she wrote Village Practice. Her interests include book illustration and she has written the introduction to Four Hedges, the reprint of a gardening classic by the distinguished wood-engraver Clare Leighton. Gillian Lindsay lives in a village in Somerset.

See also information on two plays about Flora Thompson's life in Hampshire
and Heatherley, her own book telling about this period of her life.

Visit the web site dedicated to the memory of Flora Thompson and her time in east Hampshire

Please feel free to contact if you would like to share information on the life and works of Flora Thompson.