English country calendar

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 17

English country calendar

A Country Calendar and Other Writings. By Flora Thompson. Edited by Margaret Lane. Oxford University Press, 1980. 307 pp. $23.45.

(Reviewed by

Mollie Mackenzie)

' Flora Thompson’s candid, but loving eve for the 'Victorian niral scene, and her contemplative recitals of country ‘Customs, superstitions and vernacular 'language, have won an increasing following. “Lark Rise to Candleford and “Still Glides the Stream have been reprinted in hardback, paperback and in large type for the partially Si °This new offering (into its second ■edition) is a previously unpublished ■ autobiographical novel, Heatherley, 'and some verses from Bog Myrtle '■and Peat,” as well as 12 essays, headed under the months, of the year, which were chosen from hundreds that ■apneared in weekly papers ano womens’ magazines over many years. ■ All combine the observations of a 'naturalist, humanist, social historian •and literary artist with Hora alter ego, the practical ..postmistress, hardworking and loving ftwife and mother, organiser of an iiamateur writers’ club and writer of romances.

Flora Thompson. could see the humour of her situation when, as she put it, “the pen she had taken for a sword had, in her hands, turned- into a darning needle.”- Eventually it was the ability to strike a common touch, which.her hard life had conditioned, that made her autobiographical writing so popular.

Selected and edited by Margaret Lane, with line drawings by Clare Roberts, this book is designed to accompany its predecessors from the Oxford University Press., The introduction is,a valuable biographical essay, planned as a modest memoir, but . including information and encouragement- from other writers, from family and friends who knew Flora Thompson, as well as discoveries of her unpublished work.

There are photographs of the author in youth when, as poet and postmistress, she had a brief celebrity in the 19205. That she achieved- her masterpiece, the “Lark Rise” trilogy, in the last decade of her life (she was 70 when she died in 1947) was the culmination of 60 years of preparation. “A Country Calendar,” with Miss Lane’s added information, is a step back to that preparatory period.