Dreams of the Good Life: The Life of Flora Thompson and the Creation of Lark Rise to Candleford - Hardcover

Mabey, Richard

3.64

56 ratings by Goodreads

9781846142789: Dreams of the Good Life: The Life of Flora Thompson and the Creation of Lark Rise to Candleford

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846142784 ISBN 13: 9781846142789

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2014

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Lark Rise to Candleford is one of the defining portraits of life in the 19th-century English countryside and a much-loved classic; yet little is known about its author. This highly original biography by one of Britain's finest nature writers interweaves Thompson's semi-fictionalized stories with an account of her transformation from post-office clerk to professional writer. Writing in lyrical prose worthy of his subject, Mabey offers an unforgettable depiction of a working-class woman writer's struggle for creative expression.

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Review:

Terrific . . . what makes Mabey's appreciation of Lark Rise's shape-shifting so compelling is that he never makes the mistake of thinking that the original was summoned up by some act of the collective unconscious. Instead, he reminds us of Thompson's awkward and patient achievement, as the sole creator of a bona fide work of art (Guardian)

It seems unlikely we shall ever get closer to the woman who wrote Lark Rise to Candleford (Sunday Times)

Dreams Of The Good Life is a gem of a book, small, perfectly formed, informative and, as his title suggests, dreamy (Sunday Herald)

About the Author:

Richard Mabey is the acclaimed author of some thirty books including Gilbert White, which won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1986, Flora Britannica (1995), winner of a National Book Award, and Nature Cure (2005), which was short-listed for three major literary awards, the Whitbread, Ondaatje, and J.R. Ackerley prizes. He writes for the Guardian, New Statesman and Granta, and contributes frequently to BBC radio. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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