Thompson, Flora

Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin Modern Classics)

Average customer rating:

One of my favorite classics
A literary time machine
Nostalgia not what it used to be.
An excellent appreciation of the "old" ways

Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin Modern Classics)
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0141183314

Customer Reviews:

One of my favorite classics.......2006-03-21

I am so glad this book is still in print. It is one of my very favorites, and I read it at least once per year, like Huckleberry Finn. For those of us who love nature, and tales of growing up in the out-of-doors, this is a beautiful book of the natural world and agricultural lands. It contains wonderful sketches about farm life in the turn-of-the century English countryside, school life, and village characters. This book reminds me of Cider With Rosie (also called The Edge of Day) by Laurie Lee, another excellent book about growing up in England, set around the time of WWI. This is truly worthwhile reading. If you have read "Lark Rise to Candleford" and enjoyed it, another book by Flora Thompson, "Still Glides the Stream", deals with the same subject matter and is also very good.

A literary time machine.......2005-12-08

LRTC is one of those books that I read almost every year. Why you should ask? There is no other book that provides a view into a time long past as Flora Thompson does in this and her other major work, "Still Glides the Stream". These are works that allow you to see, smell, taste and touch the fabric of a society in full measure. There is nothing maudlin or sentimental in these works, they demonstrate the grinding poverty of the rural poor in the late 19th century when slowly but surely the winds of change were at work to topple once and for all the rigid hierarchy of the Victorian class system. Also lost are the rural traditions and folk life of a people bonded to the earth and its seasonal cycles. Yet at the same time fully demonstrating the quiet joys and happiness that take place within the family of Laura, the main character who is a thinly disguised Flora Thompson.
One of the great characters in literature you will meet here is Miss Dorcas Lane, the village postmistress Laura goes to work for. She has the grit, grace and humanity of a Dickens character. Miss Lane also is at the vanguard of a new era, when it's revealed she prefers reading Darwin than suffering the Victorian Bible babble around her.
Once encountered, this book will remain a trusted old friend to turn to again and again.

Nostalgia not what it used to be........2001-08-17

As the previous customer review notes, "Lark Rise to Candleford" fully details life in, alternately, an English hamlet (Lark Rise), a village and a town (Candleford) at the turn of the 20th C. And, as with the prior review, the book is invariably described as a fond recollection of a bygone, uncomplicated era. I value it, though, for the opposite reason, that by describing agricultural life of the last century so accurately and dispassionately, it unintentionally shows such life to be overwhelmingly impoverished, bare and humdrum. In several passages, the author Flora Thompson scolds herself for making the hamlet and village sound so unremittingly dull. Ironically, her protests only underscore the reality of daily existence. One of her most telling observations is about the rarity of drunkenness in Lark Rise, not, as one might infer, because of a higher moral standard, but because no one could afford more than a glass of beer at a sitting. At another point, she describes without editorial the death of noblesse oblige and the resulting hand-to-mouth poverty, unbroken by one-time manor-sponsored holidays and fetes, that accompanied the transition from tenant to wage farming in the latter half of the 19th century. The ultimate strength of this book for me, therefore, is its reminder that, for so many Western people, these really are the good, old days.

An excellent appreciation of the "old" ways.......1997-12-27

This trilogy was one I read many years ago and only returned to recently. On this reading it was an even better - recalling in detail a life which has totally gone now but has a wonder and joy in it which we can no longer experience. On having her fortune told - the main character was told she would be loved by people she had never met - for once astrology worked. An excellent piece of literature.

Still Glides the Stream (Oxford Paperbacks ; 366)

Average customer rating:

reminiscences of village life

Still Glides the Stream (Oxford Paperbacks ; 366)
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0192811924

Customer Reviews:

reminiscences of village life.......2006-08-26

If you enjoyed "Cider With Rosie" by Laurie Lee, you are sure to also like "Lark Rise to Candleford" and "Still Glides the Stream" by Flora Thompson. These three books are all gentle, loving, and humorous recollections of childhoods spent in English villages. I first read "Lark Rise to Candlford" in Junior High. I have read it again almost every year, because it is one of my favorite books, full of the author's appreciation of the out-of-doors and agricultural ways, but I did not know Flora Thompson had written another book. When I received "Still Glides the Stream" in the mail, I was delighted to find that it exactly matches my illustrated "Cider With Rosie" and "Lark Rise to Candleford". All three books have similar covers and feature cut-outs of dried leaves, flowers, and insects, and paintings and sketches of farm and small-town life. In "Still Glides the Stream", Charity Finch, a retired schoolteacher, returns to the village of her childhood after the end of WWII. She remembers what life was like in "Restharrow", a made-up village in Oxfordshire. She has many warm memories of the unique characters and traditions which began disappearing after WWI and even more so after WWII. If you have an affection for old days and old ways, you are sure to find this is a charming, lovely and interesting book.

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The Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: Bracken Bks.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1851709940

The Peverel Papers: A Yearbook of the Countryside

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The Peverel Papers: A Yearbook of the Countryside
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: David & Charles
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0712612963

The Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy

Average customer rating:

simple account of a lost lifestyle

The Illustrated Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: Ebury Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

simple account of a lost lifestyle.......1999-12-02

I borrowed this book from the library. I love the illustrations, which very much enhance the story. The author reminisces about the way things were in the English countryside in the 1880's. Her accounts and descriptions might be simple, of everyday tasks that we don't think much about, but i really enjoyed learning about these details.

The book i read, the "Illustrated" version, is an abrigment of the thre volumes. The editors say at the end that the abridgment was done mostly to avoid repetition, which exists in the three books so that they can be read independently of each other.

THE ILLUSTRATED STILL GLIDES THE STREAM.
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THE ILLUSTRATED STILL GLIDES THE STREAM.
Flora. Thompson
Manufacturer: BCA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HJBHTW

Lark Rise to Candleford (World's Classics)
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Lark Rise to Candleford (World's Classics)
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0192505424

THE ILLUSTRATED LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD.
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THE ILLUSTRATED LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD.
Flora & Julian Shuckburgh (Editor). Thompson
Manufacturer: BCA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O8KM38

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LARK RISE
FLORA THOMPSON
Manufacturer: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000RXZQZY

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Lark Rise
Flora Thompson
Manufacturer: The Folio Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HN88G8

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