Flora Thompson

Flora Jane Thompson, the famous English novelist and poet, was born in Oxfordshire on 5th December 1876. After leaving school at fourteen, and moving away from home for the first time, she worked as a post-office clerk at the Fringford post-office. Among other post offices where Flora worked was that at Grayshott in Hampshire, and she later moved to Bournemouth. In 1903, she married John William Thompson, who was a post-office-clerk and later became a postmaster. They had two sons (the younger, Peter, later lost at sea in 1941) and a daughter. In 1911, she won an essay competition in The Ladies Companion for a 300-word essay about Jane Austen. She wrote short stories and essays for The Catholic Fireside, the Daily News, The Lady. She is famous for her semi-autobiographical trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), published originally as Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943).

Flora Thompson died on 21 May 1947, and was buried in Dartmouth, Devon.

Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson's immortal trilogy, containing "Lark Rise", "Over To Candleford" and "Candleford Green", is a heartwarming portrayal of country life at the close of the 19th century. This story is based on the author's experiences during childhood and youth. It chronicles May Day celebrations and forgotten children's games, the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations - all painted with a gaiety and freshness of observation that make this trilogy an evocative and sensitive memorial to Victorian rural England.

Lark Rise

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Poor People's Houses

THE hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn…

Keep on reading online here.

A BBC adaptation, starring Julia Sawalha, Olivia Hallinan, Brendan Coyle and Dawn French, began on BBC One in the UK on 13 January 2008.

Read the programme description here.

Also visit the BBC website. Read about the characters here and about the history of Lark Rise here.

Watch the trailer.