Dreams of the Good Life The Life of Flora Thompson and the Creation of Lark Rise to Candleford Synopsis
While the Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, Flora Thompson's much-loved portrait of life in the English countryside, has inspired a hit television series, relatively little is known about the author herself. In this highly original book, bestselling biographer and nature writer Richard Mabey sympathetically retraces her life and her transformation from a post-office clerk who left school at fourteen to a sophisticated professional writer. Revealing how a formidable imagination can arise from the humblest of beginnings, Dreams of the Good Life paints a poignant, unforgettable portrait of a working-class woman writer's struggle for creative expression.
Richard Mabey is the author of the bestselling, award-winning and ground-breaking FLORA BRITANNICA (which sold nearly 90,000 at -35), as well as many highly praised books about nature and the environment, including FOOD FOR FREE and THE UNOFFICIAL COUNTRYSIDE. His book about Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography of the Year.