Flora Thompson | Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

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Lark Rise, [73] 14; Over to Candleford & Candleford Green, [74] 13

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‘Flora Thompson’s writing excels in her descriptions of nature’

Bag Full of Books

‘Over to Candleford and Candleford Green form the second and third part of the semi-autobiographical account of Flora Thompson’s early experiences in rural Oxfordshire, of which Lark Rise is the first.’

Over to Candleford & Candleford Green | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

In Over to Candleford, the sequel to Lark Rise (SFE No. 58), life begins to open out for Flora – or Laura as she calls her lightly fictionalized childhood self – when she goes to visit her father’s relations in the local market town. She makes particular friends with her uncle Tom, a liberal thinker and respected craftsman, who shares with her his love of books and his talent for attracting interesting and often eccentric people. Back at home and now in her teens, Laura is restless and undecided about her future, until news comes of a vacancy for an assistant at the Post Office in a nearby village. Candleford Green is an enchanting picture of Laura’s new life in this colourful community and of Dorcas Lane, her redoubtable – and unforgettable – employer. Over to Candleford and Candleford Green are published together as a single Slightly Foxed Edition and we do hope you enjoy reading them.

An Understanding Heart

Hazel Wood on Flora Thompson, Over to Candleford & Candleford Green

I can’t remember when I first read the magical trilogy that came to be known as Lark Rise to Candleford but, turning to it for comfort during the days of the 2020 lockdowns, I was struck afresh by the wonderful clarity and assurance of the writing. Most memoirs at the time Flora Thompson was writing were by comfortably educated, middle-class people, while she grew up as the daughter of a poor bricklayer in a small Oxfordshire village. Yet from the first sentence you feel the authenticity of her voice and know you are in the hands of an accomplished writer. As her biographer Margaret Lane put it, ‘She was able to write the annals of the poor because she was one of them.’

‘It is a beautiful place to be transported to’

Bag Full of Books

‘Flora is “Laura” in the retelling and with a keen eye for observing nature and beauty, Flora Thompson renders an exacting yet not too sentimental picture of what life was like for the rural poor. Struggling to make ends meet, yet happy in enjoying the simple pleasures of life, Lark Rise is an intimate and detailed social history of life in those times . . . It is a beautiful place to be transported to and though the last page of the book brought tears to my eyes, I will leave it to you, to find out why.’

On Juniper Hill

Nicola Chester on Flora Thompson, Lark Rise

Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise has always felt like home. A romantic notion, perhaps, from someone brought up in the 1970s and ’80s, rather than a century ago, as Flora was. I first read it when I was 13, then again in my twenties, and once more recently, this time as a mother, looking back on my own childhood but also on that of my children, as the oldest two began to make their way into the world, away from the rural hamlet and tenanted ex-farmworker’s cottage they’ve grown up in. With the passing of time that feeling of homecoming has only grown stronger.

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