Without Education Or Encouragement
For over sixty years, English writer Flora Thompson (1876-1947) has been celebrated as the author of Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), a rural trilogy that is considered a minor classic among writings about the English countryside. Challenging the assumption that Lark Rise to Candleford is Thompson's only significant work, this book examines the whole of Thompson's oeuvre, including the poetry, short fiction, and essays that she published in women's periodicals before World War II, her book of poetry, Bog Myrtle and Peat (1921), and two posthumously published works, Still Glides the Stream (1947) and Heatherley (1979). In addition to reassessing Thompson's significance as a twentieth-century woman writer, this study explores the connections between Lark Rise to Candleford and the author's early work, questioning its current classification as a work of autobiography and arguing for a more nuanced, literary interpretation of this rural classic. Ruth Collette Hoffman teaches English composition and literature at the College of DuPage..
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