Lark Rise

First published in 1939, this is a memoir of a late-Victorian Oxfordshire hamlet, thinly veiled as Lark Rise, seen through Laura, a stonemason's daughter. It records cottage interiors, field work, pig-keeping, school, church, and the calendar of feasts as enclosure and low wages close in on an older agricultural order. Neighbors, the squire's village, and the walk toward the market town of Candleford fill the chapters. The voice is observant rather than confessional. The book is the first part of a rural trilogy, a social recollection of one hamlet, not a novel of invented plot.

Full grey cloth binding lithographed with a contemporary photograph in dark green. Orange endleaves. Pale yellow-brown slipcase.